Strange Loops

Rumspringa, n.
1. Literally, “running around” [from Pennsylvania German].
2. A period when adolescent Amish explore the outside world before making an informed decision to either leave the Amish community (resulting in shunning) or be baptised as a full, adult member of the church.

Although the Amish do not approve of adolescent rebellion and breaks from church rules, during the period of Rumspringa, youth often engage in rebellious behavior contrary to the community’s strict standards. They can go on dates. They may secretly experience modern technology and music, drive cars, wear non-Amish clothes and hair styles. Some experiment with drinking, smoking, drugs and sex. In other words, during Rumspringa they see what the world outside the sheltered and stern Amish community is like, what it has to offer, before making a more informed decision about staying in the church.

More generally, then, Rumspringa is a period of exploring the world outside of your normal one, involving a radical break from habit and the comfortable safety of the familiar. It means breaking from tradition or custom, experiencing other life styles or communities, and basically exposing yourself to the larger world.

Note that the actual practice of Rumspringa among the Amish and consequences for misbehavior differ between communities and between individuals. For some it involves much less deviation from norms (often because small communities do not offer the anonymity found in larger ones), and generally sinning is still hidden from the community. For those curious about Rumspringa in the Amish, check out the awesome documentary Devil’s Playground, which NPR did a report on.

Short answer: yes, it is irrational. Odds of winning big are less than the ratio of ticket cost to amount won. If $1 has a 1 in 1-billion chance of netting you 500 million dollars, it’s a really bad deal. Why?

Let’s say you could play the lottery over and over and over again an unlimited number of times. After a trillion plays, on average you’d win about 1000 times (roughly once every billion draws). That’s 1000 x $500 million = $500 billion won, but you’ve spent a trillion ($1000 billion) to play. So you’ve wasted a lot of money in the long run. Even if the chances of winning are closer to the cost and win amount ratio, if the odds are lower than the cost and win amount ratio, then it’s generally a bad deal.

So traditional economics says not to play the lottery.

It’s hard to argue with the simple probability of such a straightforward game, but unspoken behind the conclusion to not play lottery are a number of assumptions to which those probabilities are applied.
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Compersion, n.
1. The opposite of jealousy.
2. The positive feelings one gets when a lover is enjoying another relationship.

The term compersion originally comes from the polyamory community, where people may have multiple intimate relationships at the same time, with the knowledge and consent of all partners. In these situations, jealousy may be a natural human reaction. Compersion and jealous feelings can certainly coexist, but jealousy can often be mitigated by self-examination, and compersion can be learned.

Another term — related to compersion but broader — is “Mudita”, a Buddhist term that roughly means sympathetic joy, rejoicing in others’ good fortune. Basically, if you have a sort of inner joy or inner comfort with yourself, you are secure enough to relish the joy of others. You take pleasure in their pleasure, for its own sake, not for any relation to your own state. Compersion, then, can be thought of as an analogue of Mudita specifically applied to your loved ones: feeling secure against jealousy in your relationship such that you derive happiness from your partner’s happiness, even when that comes from outside.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” –Heraclitus

We humans are innately wired to seek out permanence. In our evolutionary past, it was useful to be able to generalize from patterns of past experience in order to predict future events. If this one plant has killed people that ate it while this other plant has had no ill effects, then we learn which types of plant are safe and which are not. We do this by assuming a certain permanence in the world - that things will continue to be as they are. A plant that was safe yesterday won’t be poisonous today.

This innate need to seek out permanence carries over into modern life as well though. When we have a good job, are in a good relationship with a friend or lover, or are otherwise pleased with a situation, we want it to last; sometimes we even expect it to last and are surprised when it does not.

In the end, this expectation of permanence, this desire that the good things stay how they are, can trap a person. It can lead to worrying about the possibility of things slipping away and ending. Pretty soon, we get so wrapped up in the possibility that this good thing might not last that we are unable to enjoy it.
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Praxis, n.
1. The process by which a theory or lesson is put into action.
2. The synthesis of action and theory; a dynamic process recognizing a reciprocal relationship between theory and practice.
3. Free, self-conscious, authentic activity practiced by free persons, as opposed to alienated labor.

The term comes from Ancient Greek, where Aristotle defined it as direct action, distinct from theoretical knowledge (theoria) and production (poiesis). Specifically, praxis for Aristotle was an activity that was good as an end in itself (for its own sake), whereas poiesis was an action that was good as a means to another end (e.g. economic activity). Praxis is informed by theoria, putting theory into action.

That is, praxis is an informed, deliberate action, not just habitual custom. It directly contributes to a flourishing life, rather than being an indirect means to a later end.

Sartre distinguished praxis (action) from the practico-inert (the structure or context in which that action happens, which builds out of and informs praxis). “Speech acts are praxis, whereas language is practico-inert; social institutions are practico-inert but the actions they foster and limit are praxes” [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. In other words, our institutions, ideas and social structures are powerless and meaningless without considering the praxis that instantiates and informs them. This leads to a feedback loop where our actions create their own contexts — we create the structures of our world, and that in turn shapes our actions. We reshape our world by interrupting this loop, inserting new actions deliberatively.

Finally, I’ll take this opportunity to plug sf0, a collaborative game that takes place in the real world, the virtual world, and its players’ minds. Players complete tasks — ranging from the simple to the absurd to the illegal to the transcendent — in order to level up and gain access to more tasks. It’s action for the development of character, community, chaos. Check out the praxis to look at some recently completed tasks.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter has long been one of my favorite books. That book tackles what it means to be conscious and how consciousness or meaning could arise out of unconsious and meaningless elements (i.e. physical particles bouncing off of each other). It was witty and fun and enlightening, drawing from the math and logic of Kurt Godel, the impossible artwork of M.C. Escher, the many-leveled fugues of J.S. Bach, as well as Zen, Lewis Carroll, meta-fiction, puzzles and more. I love Godel, Escher, Bach.

For that reason, I was tentative in 2007 when Hofstadter released I Am a Strange Loop, a thinner book than the earlier tome, and of narrower scope (but still tackling a broad and deep subject!). How could it possibly live up to Hofstadter’s original, Pulitzer Prize-winning work? Thus, I put off reading the new book for a while.

Having finished it recently, I admit I did feel a little let-down. Partly due to repetition (rehashing arguments and analogies made in GEB), and partly due to some slips into weak argumentation against straw man opponents. Once in a while, I found myself shaking my head where he could have tightened up his philosophical discourse and made his case stronger than he did.
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The auto insurance company Allstate has announced a new program to improve driving safety in older drivers. The program, InSight, consists of some computer-based cognitive training programs that are supposed to improve visual processing. In turn, they think that will improve driving performance in seniors.

Whether or not the program will have significant beneficial effects is still in testing. But if it works, it appears likely that drivers who complete the training (or maybe just those who score well on a follow-up test) will get a discount on their insurance rates.

Sounds nice, and the basic premise makes good sense. If you can indeed train people to be better drivers by playing some simple cognitive computer games, then it’s a win-win situation. Right?

The potential downside I see is more long-term and big picture.
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