Welcome to the IdeaMatt blog!

My rebooted blog on tech, creative ideas, digital citizenship, and life as an experiment.

Tuesday
Oct122010

Towards a calculus of happiness

As I write my Think, Try, Learn book I'm enjoying applying the TTL principles to the writing itself. As part of the meta experiment in Edison, my current experiment is try expressing the ideas in terms of reasoning from first principles. What I want to emerge are categories of ideas like: Mindset, Worldview, Framework, Skills, Principles, Practices, Values, and Artifacts.

The Pizza Equation

I have two very different inspirations for this approach: The Extreme Programming Pocket Guide and Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. (Check out the Wikipedia articles Extreme Programming and Wabi-sabi.) Koren's Wabi-Sabi book in particular has a one-pager that's a tight and clear mind blower (see "The Wabi-Sabi Universe" below).

I'd like your advice on the first principles on which I could create a logically consistent explanation of how an experiment-driven life can make us happier. Here I'm trying to start with what Koren calls the Metaphysical Basis - the underlying natural laws of my TTL universe. I have quite a few more items than he has, and these ideas are semi-formed, but here's my stab as of today. I've picked ones that resonate for me and my logical/scientific mind, but I'd love to hear your suggestions for facts I'm missing.

  • The world is constantly changing.
  • Our knowledge is always incomplete.
  • We are limited in what we can control.
  • Attachment leads to suffering.
  • We like feeling light (not too serious).
  • We feel good around supporting people.
  • Being present/mindful/in the moment -> happiness.
  • We feel good around beauty.
  • We are all different.

At a higher level:

  • The only way to improve is to change something.
  • We are born curious.
  • Change is scary.

What do you think?

The Wabi-Sabi Universe

"Wabi-sabi can be called a 'comprehensive' aesthetic system. Its world view, or universe, is self referential. It provides an integrated approach to the ultimate nature of existence (metaphysics), sacred knowledge (spirituality), emotional well-being (state of mind), behaviour (morality), and the look and feel of things (materiality). The more systematic and clearly defined the components of an aesthetic system are - the more conceptual handles, the more ways it refers back to fundamentals - the more useful it is."

Metaphysical Basis

  • Things are either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness

Spiritual Values

  • Truth comes from the observation of nature
  • "Greatness" exists in inconspicuous and overlooked details
  • Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness

State of Mind

  • Acceptance of the inevitable
  • Appreciation of the cosmic order

Moral Precepts

  • Get rid of all that is unnecessary
  • Focus on the intrinsic and ignore material hierarchy

Material Qualities

  • The suggestion of natural process
  • Irregular
  • Intimate
  • Unpretentious
  • Earthy
  • Murky
  • Simple
Thursday
Oct072010

A Self-Tracking Operating System for Your Brain?

Custom Husband Bot

As a Science Fiction fan I was excited to come across the MindHacks article Towards an operating system for brain hacking, which describes an article on "brain coprocessor" technology (Technology Review: Brain Coprocessors). This made me think of implications for the Quantified Self movement. Consider:

Miniature, implantable brain coprocessors might be able to support new kinds of personalized medicine, for example continuously adapting a neural control strategy to the goals, state, environment, and history of an individual patient

So on the data tracking side of the Experiment-Driven Life we would have lots of possible measurements for experimentation. This is important when talking about experiments involving our bodies because there are many complex factors that may be relevant to identifying patterns, but we need guidance to know where to start (see my post Variables). Throwing lots of data at ourselves might not be a useful strategy, but new approaches in finding correlations may yield fruit (see The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete). Importantly, you'd want to merge internal measurements with context, such as location and social interactions.

More profoundly, not only are we talking about discovering data about ourselves, but about being able to alter brain dynamics. Talk about possible experiment ideas.

The final point is about security concerns, which could take "mind hacks" to a whole different level. (For some fascinating stories about implantable devices and threats, check out Kevin Fu's talks, which include his being able to convince a pacemaker to possibly kill the patient - controlled from outside the body.)

I'm curious: What do you think? What other ways might this kind of data be used for experimentation? Would you get a cognitive coprocesser installed?

Wednesday
Oct062010

Are you experimenting with email? Should you?

Tuesday
Oct052010

Things that sit around and invite delight

Boyfriend's request- guitar bento

I continue to think about the idea of lowering barriers to experimentation, and an idea that came up is in the category of play: Put things in your environment that invite playful interaction. For example, someone found that putting out musical instruments - even simple ones - drew people in to experiment with them, especially kids. (Yes, they haven't got all that embarrassed-to-play stuff I accumulated as an adult).

Here's another one I love: The local cafe where I write (see Edison - reserve mornings for writing) has chalkboards in the bathrooms. What a fun way to express yourself and see what others are thinking.

I'm curious: What other things can you place that get people involved?

Monday
Oct042010

Welcome to The Experiment-Driven Life blog

Water Balloons III

It's been a long time since I've posted, but that's because lots has been going on behind the scenes. The biggest noticeable difference is that I've migrated1 to a new hosting and blogging platform SquareSpace which is lowering the barriers in important ways: Far easier to edit site content, create blog posts, and get design help from my brilliant Think, Try, Learn collaborator.

I'm changing my blog's name to The Experiment-Driven Life to reflect my new focus on treating everything in life as an experiment - trying things, learning from them, and being happier. As I wrote in The Experiment-Driven Life, this work is deeply connected to the burgeoning Quantified Self movement. Some of the yummy content I'm excited to share is:

  • Experiment-related news and commentary
  • Highlights of Edison experiments
  • Useful experiment ideas
  • A continuing Think, Try, Learn interview series2
  • Edison development news
  • Reviews of self-experimentation sites like Patients Like Me
  • Great quotes with TTL interpretation

Please contact me for any reason - thoughts, TTL, technical problems, broken links, etc.

Happy experimenting!

matt

 


1 For the technically minded I'll post an after-action report on the many problems moving from Drupal to SquareSpace, and an analysis of the 2~1/2~ year Drupal experiment - though I didn't know I was doing one at the time.

2 My first was with Alexandra Carmichael