Ego's Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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Slevin
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Slevin »

Ego wrote:
Thu Aug 04, 2022 2:08 pm
Another box arrived with a case of kitty litter and a case of Cottonelle flushable wet wipes. Mrs. Ego has a pool party with a frugal friend who has a cat so she gets the cat litter. Never in a million years would we buy the wet wipe things but it is interesting to see how the other half lives. Sooooooothing.
Just a quick note that these "flushable" wipes don't actually disintegrate in the sewer after flushing and will cause downstream issues for both your plumbing as well as the sewer system as a whole over time. Since I think you are the guy scheduling all the maintenance calls for the building, might be best to avoid these?

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jennypenny
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by jennypenny »

Yes, don't flush the wipes unless you like playing around with the snake.

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

Good to know. Our plumbing system was designed when toilet paper usage had not quite taken off so it will definitely not do well with these.

horsewoman
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by horsewoman »

I'm reading your posts to my husband, we are huge fans of the ego lifestyle. Amazing!

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

Thank you @horsewoman!

After a one roll test, Mrs. Ego and I unanimously voted that we do not like the 'good' toilet paper and reverted back to the cheap stuff. I guess we will sell the good stuff at the swap meet or maybe wait for the next crisis as TP seems to become the currency of choice.

I stumbled upon this today and decided to post it for future reference: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/start-with-creation

I like the quote in the beginning:
I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Man’s
I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create

— William Blake
Here are a few snippets from the post.
Muse arrives to us most readily during creation, not before.

So it is an error to wait around for inspiration, or to demand some feeling of readiness for an undertaking, or for a teacher or some other golden opportunity.

I think there is value in pushing learning and doing as close together as possible. I wish to learn like an apprentice with no fixed master, instead with repeated trial and sharing the results.

I believe every hard thing you do, for that matter, acts as a multiplier on the rest of your knowledge.

Failure is something you want to tempt. You should court it the way the bullfighter courts the bull. When I wish to learn something, I begin with this in mind.

zbigi
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by zbigi »

Ego wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:52 pm
Thank you @horsewoman!

After a one roll test, Mrs. Ego and I unanimously voted that we do not like the 'good' toilet paper and reverted back to the cheap stuff. I guess we will sell the good stuff at the swap meet or maybe wait for the next crisis as TP seems to become the currency of choice.
In Communist Poland, toilet paper was usually hard to get. People tipped off one another if it suddenly became available in some particular store. Such pictures were common:

Image

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

For the past few months I have been cycling with my group again. I get there early and run 7.5 miles around the island and then chase the group on the bike. I stay about 4 or 5 bike lengths off of the back of the "A" group which leaves me enough time to react if there is an accident. Every so often someone drops off of the back of the peloton and then tries to catch my wheel, which is not ideal, but I live with it.

Back in early July I overheard two of my friends talking after the ride. They were discussing the logistics of going down to the bay to do an open water swim. I butted into the conversation and they invited me to join them. After the swim one of the guys asked if I wanted to join him on Wednesdays for a regular run/swim workout in addition to the Saturday swim. He is older than me by twenty years and somewhat slower, but he is a retired fighter pilot with the kind of grit I admire and he is as tough as nails. I figured it would be worth a try to see if it worked out. I decided to incorporate out-and-back intervals into both the run and swim, which makes it a better workout than if I were going alone.

He gets me onto the Seal base where we run on the beach. Two week ago we passed a massive group of BUDS candidates with arms locked, sitting in the surf. This week we ran with about fifty SWCC swift boaters doing a training run.

I mentioned to Mrs. Ego how much I was enjoying spending time with him because he is an excellent role model for how I want to be at seventy. The very next day he mentioned that he likes to workout on the Seal base because he believes it is important for someone his age to spend time with fit people who are younger than him. My kind of guy.

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

Another gem by Saris.
https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the- ... -is-agency

What he says regarding the transition from school to work applies doubly for the transition from work to post-work.
Most people today more-or-less know what they are going to be doing for the first twenty-or-more years of their life—being in some kind of school (the “doing” is almost more “being told what to do”). Beyond that age there is of course the proverbial worker, in modern stories usually an office worker, who is often so inert that he becomes blindsided by a sudden yank of reality (that forces him out of his inertia, and in doing so the story begins).

Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you. Most famous people go off-script early, usually in more than one way.
While I believe his definition of agency is technically impossible, I agree that a willingness (enthusiasm?) to go off the script provided by others or "the system" is important.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

Ego wrote:
Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:56 am
While I believe his definition of agency is technically impossible,
Is that because you view agency as something that is necessarily coupled with 'events that simply happen to you'?

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

@AH, Yes, I believe I am the DNA I inherited at conception and everything that happened to me from that moment on. I am unable to see a moment where agency, like the kind he is talking about, begins. Though I see the benefit of acting as if I have agency.

ETA, I was thinking about it while running. I believe that one of the reasons I am not attracted to things like Myers Briggs, Wheaton levels and all of the other colors and rankings is because I see them as offering more refined scripts for those addicted to scripts rather than encouraging people to go off script.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

That makes sense, thanks. It occurs to me that for those who find themselves lost in a forest of scripts, they might find certain scripts useful as maps or sets of directions to the edge of the script-forest so that they can then finally find their own off-script path. The danger, of course, is getting too comfortable or reliant on the scripts and never weaning oneself off them.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I believe that one of the reasons I am not attracted to things like Myers Briggs, Wheaton levels and all of the other colors and rankings is because I see them as offering more refined scripts for those addicted to scripts rather than encouraging people to go off script.
I sometimes feel that way too. OTOH, it is usually the case that these models also suggest that as one becomes higher-functioning, type becomes less distinguishable. So, staying on script is somewhat akin to staying addicted to the vices or dysfunction modes most associated with your type. So, interesting question might be whether choosing to experience the "vices" more associated with other types might lead to growth towards overall higher functioning through empathy or insight? For instance, the vice associated with 7 is gluttony and the vice associated with 5 is greed, and they are mutually incompatible, but also similar.

daylen
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by daylen »

Determinism would have us believe that even when we are off "script" we are daemons embedded in the universal turing machine implementing "reality". Though, it is puzzling me to whether such is actually the case given I am not sure how I would prove that to myself or anyone else. Even if nearly every fact of human biology was at my finger tips, where would I choose to begin my argument? DNA -> body -> behavior? Big bang -> now? Hormonal imbalance -> this feeling? There seems to be a re-emergent trend in the deconstruction of free will (sam harris, robert sapolsky, etc.), which I think is fundamentally conflicted with the scientific enterprise. As the axiom of choice is required to arbitrarily select an element of a set which is required to construct a probability based upon random draws. Probability is at the heart of scientific validation/falsification.

In other words, the illusion of determination is just as strong as the illusion of free will or agency it would seem.

candide
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by candide »

@daylen

There is a kind of motte and bailey that often happens around determinism discourse. There is a toggling between theoretical determinism, like Lapace's Demon, and then some simple determinism. This quest for simple determinism and the motivated reasoning behind it is what I read into (or connect with) as the building of the illusion of determinism.

I don't believe Ego is guilty of this, in fact quite the contrary with his other comment about the refined scripts still being scripts.

What's not widely appreciated in this even the motte, the strong part, isn't even that strong for what people seem to want out of their determinism: knowing what lesser beings are going to do.

I can't provide any of the rigor behind, but I can at least pull quotes.

Strogatz writes
When a system is nonlinear, its behavior can be impossible to forecast with formulas, even though that behavior is completely determined. In other words, determinism does not imply predictability. pg 280
And, ibid:
. . . all of biology is nonlinear; so is sociology. That's why the soft sciences are hard -- and the last to be mathematized. Because of nonlinearity, there's nothing soft about them. pg 280
More:
https://keithhuddleston.blogspot.com/20 ... think.html

daylen
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by daylen »

I suppose I fail to see what determine could mean if not referring to a somewhat predictable mapping between initial states and final states of a system. It almost seems like an axiom of faith amongst scientific researchers to presume something determines what they observe even if they cannot point to it.

No problem with this as far as I am concerned. Just pointing out some observations. :geek:

candide
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by candide »

daylen wrote:
Sat Sep 10, 2022 10:50 am
I suppose I fail to see what determine[ism] could mean if not referring to a somewhat predictable mapping between initial states and final states of a system. It almost seems like an axiom of faith amongst scientific researchers to presume something determines what they observe even if they cannot point to it.
I think that is the strongest version of the argument. Consider everything I wrote in my last reply more as footnote, saying "if you don't buy that. . . "

You've convinced me. Materialism as determinism isn't true since we are interested in the emergent patterns, and those don't map the way Newtonian mechanics do.

This makes me think of something from Christopher Alexander:
Up until about 1600, most of the world views that existed in different cultures did see man and the universe as more or less intertwined and inseparable ... either through the medium of what they called God or in some other way. But all that was understood. The particular intellectual game that led us to discover all the wonders of science forced us to abandon temporarily that idea. In other words, in order to do physics, to do biology, we were actually taught to pretend that things were like little machines because only then could you tinker with them and find out what makes them tick. That's all fine. It was a tremendous endeavor, and it paid off.

But it may have been factually wrong. That is, the constitution of the universe may be such that the human self and the substance that things made out of, the spatial matter or whatever you call it, are much more inextricably related than we realized. Now, I am not talking about some kind of aboriginal primitivism. I am saying that it may actually be a matter of fact that those things are more related than we realize. And that we have been trained to play a trick on ourselves for the last 300 years in order to discover certain things.
From this debate:
http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

daylen wrote:
Sat Sep 10, 2022 8:31 am
Though, it is puzzling me to whether such is actually the case given I am not sure how I would prove that to myself or anyone else. Even if nearly every fact of human biology was at my finger tips, where would I choose to begin my argument?
I bring this up periodically because I would like for someone to change my mind on the issue. I truly want to believe I have agency.

Rather than trying to prove a negative, I try to figure out the moment I actually acquired agency. Most will agree that I did not have it at the moment of conception. At that point I was determined by genes and circumstances. I was almost certainly born without agency. At some point I developed into a human that could make decisions, but those decisions were always based on my previous experiences. I fail to see when I gained agency to make decisions that were not based in my prior experiences. A different decision would require different prior experiences and a different person.

In other words, my neurons and neurochemistry were arranged in such a way that I could only make a particular decision. In order to make a different decision my neurons and neurochemistry would have had to be arranged in a different way.

In order to change my mind you would literally have to change my mind. Despite that, it remains (enthusiastically) open to being changed.

daylen
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by daylen »

I am unsure if there is a part of me that was unborn. Part of me doesn't know if I could satisfy my "whole" by defining determination or agency in such a way that would help determine the truth. Trying just seems to send "me" off on a bunch of tangents that are hard to "make sense of". As even a slight perturbation in how an argument is mapped into first-person, "raw" sensory experience can influence the entire deductive chain emanating into the future. Plus I just don't know if a prior or even posterior self is deceiving the current self.

I suppose I am agnostic. :) I am also quite hesitant because it seems like throwing consciousness out as an epiphenomenon is extreme! Why is it like something to be me?

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

Yesterday I had an in person showing of one of my more expensive paintings. I have a place in the lobby with a large otherwise empty wall where the light is good and the buyer can stand back and get a feel for the painting from afar. The potential buyer, a fit guy in his forties wearing exercise clothing, barely greeted me and went right up to the painting. The angle of the light emphasized the thick impasto and he moved even closer and nearly touched it.

I knew almost immediately he would not be buying. In the end he offered a little more than a third of my asking price. I declined.

The art market, at least the one I operate in, has cooled recently. People buy art when they have new walls to cover. The housing market has taken a turn and art has followed.

That does not stop the supply. In fact, it accelerates it. Last week a friend found a painting that appeared to be a retouched old European painting. The stretcher bars and canvas told a story but he could not decipher the signature. He knows I enjoy the detective work and asked me to take a look. I used my micro lens to snap a few photos then zoomed in close, changing the contrast, hue, saturation and brightness until I could make it out. Eventually I found a similar signature. An 18th Century Italian master. A mixed blessing. Just barely valuable enough that extensive restoration and reframing may be justified, but without provenance it becomes a problem.

A few months ago I picked up a similar painting that did not have a signature. I showed it to this same friend and lamented the fact that it was unsigned. He laughed and said, "You mean it has not yet been signed."

The New Yorker has a wonderful article about the trials and tribulations of authenticating a painting by Lucian Freud, the famous artist and grandson of Sigmund.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022 ... cian-freud
“Everything had to be remarkable,” Greig said. Freud was drawn to extremes, and to fights. In the early seventies, John Craxton, an artist and an intimate friend of Freud’s, sold some of his drawings to a collector. When a dealer asked Freud to sign the sketches, he was furious, writing, “John Craxton is a cunt” on one of them. Freud’s fight with Craxton—a mess of legal letters and injunctions—went on for years. At one point, according to Ian Collins, Craxton’s biographer, Freud managed to have a Craxton portrait called “Lucian” removed from an exhibition, by saying it was not of him. “They became an art form,” Collins said of Freud’s feuds.

.....

“It was just a farce,” the dealer said. “Everybody was talking about millions of dollars. . . . And I was, like, What are we talking about? We shouldn’t be talking about money when we don’t even know what we have.”

-----

But what about when artists lie, or muddy the waters for their own reasons? “I often paint fakes,” Picasso is said to have said. In the sixties, he was shown a photograph of “La Douleur,” a painting that he supposedly made in 1902 or 1903. Picasso described the work as a “joke by friends,” and it was ignored for decades in a storage room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until it was definitively authenticated in 2010
---------

We are making headway on finding someone who can cover our property while we do a month of art buying in Europe.

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Ego
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Re: Ego's Journal

Post by Ego »

A few weeks ago a woman showed up at the swap meet with a box full of 2lb bags of Circle K whole bean coffee for $1 a bag. They had just expired but were really good coffee. Today she returned and I bought six more. 50 cents a pound for great coffee. Can't complain.

Image

One of the vendors bought a storage locker yesterday and tossed the boxes on the ground next to her truck this morning. While digging through a box of old thumb drives I found this at the bottom. I paid $20 for it.

Image

It has two different 24 word seed phrases written on the front and back of the card. Oh boy!

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