About Arjav Poudel

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Arjav Poudel

Telling it Your Way

Everyone loves a good story.

Life, after all, is just a rarefied anthology of the tales we have told ourselves. It could be an objectively terrible morning but based on the prose and the manner with which we craft the details, reminiscing about that time might actually be a happy experience. Any old fool can make history, but very few have the power to decide on the narrative. Bottom line: when it comes to telling your story, don’t play the fool. Tell it your way.

The notion that we can regulate our experiences for the better is not just the allegory of an optimist. Humans have often been extraordinarily able to alter in their heads better fit their pre-existing worldview. Through guidance, severely traumatic and/or similarly life-altering events can almost be erased from memory – or at least transformed beyond all recognition. Everything you are surrounded by is a projection of reality insinuated by your sense of perception – a perception fills in the blanks and takes weight averages. 

We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?

-Doctor Who

Altering the significance of an event that has already taken place is no mean feat. Going through the motions is not always smooth. often we’ll be on a road and realize that it’s the wrong one; It won’t take us where we need to go, or there may be a better route available. Sometimes we have to take that U-turn. Only where appropriate and safe to do so, but it must be done nonetheless. But don’t assume you have travelled far when going round in circles. Distance and displacement are often conflated terms. And since we must practice being mindful of our every day, the destination suddenly becomes much less important. We’re all getting there in the end. One way or another, time passes, entropy takes effect, disorder creeps in. The destination is the same. The displacement is the same for all of us. But the distance? Those highways, slip roads, and roundabouts to nowhere? Each path is unique to the individual. Our bodies give us context  – they are a means of having a world. Our world. Our journey – which can only be reviewed in retrospect. We all know where we have to go, but how to get there will always be a personal choice. We will carry on existing with beliefs and desires and hopes and dreams. We will smile, and we will hurt. We’ll know what it means to be loved and to be loathed. And someday we might come to a fork in the road – an existential dilemma. By resigning to that choice we are allowing it to define us. But by making it, we are one step closer in the right direction – simply because we have acted.

One may lose sight of the way ahead, but It’s never too late to realize that our life has gone down an undesirable route. Sometimes to get on the ideal road, we must turn around – retrace our tire tracks. People hate the idea of going backward, but that’s because they see it as a setback rather than an opportunity to try the important things again- not a ‘u-turn’ but a ‘you-turn’. It does not and will never matter where our final destination is. That’s an easy one for humans – we die. So it all comes down to the journey. 

“You are not in the universe; you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it.”

So take control. Find your road. Live your adventure- have the best one ever. And when the time comes to tell your story, you make that even better.

Arjav Poudel

Why All the Time in the World Still Isn’t Enough

Consider two students – Alan and Henry – on a typical Sunday morning. They are both in the same class and have homework due for the following day – a 500 word essay on time management. Alan has a busy day ahead of him- A football match in the morning, followed by karate and swimming in the afternoon, and a bunch of household chores in the evening. Henry, by contrast, has nothing scheduled for the day besides getting that essay done.

The hours roll by. Alan finally completes all of his chores and starts his homework at around 10 PM. After a while, he calls Henry to ask if they can work together on the final paragraph. To his surprise, Henry mumbles that he’s still stuck on the introduction. Alan is confused – does it really take the whole day to write a few lines?  Shaking his head, Alan hangs up, rounds off his essay, and calls it a night.

The following week the class is getting their results back. Alan is delighted to discover that he’s been awarded a solid B for his efforts. He looks over to Henry, who is staring dismally at his work. Henry had failed. All the time in the world and he hadn’t even got to his main argument. Alan, despite feeling sorry for him, could not help but wonder how he had managed to complete multiple activities in a single day, whereas his friend had barely escaped the introductory paragraph.

As it turned out, Henry had used his ample time to ill effect, agonizing over matters such as word choice and background research, as opposed to actually getting his main ideas down on paper.

Let’s face it: Many of us have been in Henry’s position at least some point in our lives. This ‘position’ is otherwise known as Parkinson’s Law. 

 

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law is an old adage that claims: ‘work expands to fill the time that is set aside for it’. It was a term first coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a whimsical essay he wrote for The Economist in 1955. The following paragraph is an extract from this essay.

“It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.”

Source: The Economist

 

 

 

The Solution

So how do we actually overcome this hurdle?

Many of you may be sat thinking, “If this can be a big enough issue with one task, what sort of madness occurs during a full schedule? And that begs the related question: How was our friend Alan able to get everything done?

In an ideal world, we may be blessed with just a single email in our inbox, or a single notification reminding us to clean out the garage. But real-life has the annoying habit of continually inundating us with such prompts. The 21st Century is synonymous with hectic schedules, crazy deadlines, and an overarching sense of panic as we rush to remove each item from our bottomless agendas. Frenzy is just ubiquitous with modern life – there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. Alas, on the rare occasion that there is only one important thing left to do, the corresponding lack of urgency leaves us at the mercy of Parkinson’s Law – reason enough to fumble, dawdle, and shuffle our feet lethargically. Our thoughts whisper, ‘You’ve got so much time to do the one thing – why not leave it for a while?’

But what if creating a sense of urgency was the solution?

It seems almost intuitive that having more work means more things to procrastinate about, which therefore leads to even more unfinished ‘stuff’. But that simply isn’t true, and we can infer why by focusing on the phrasing of the Law itself: “Work expands to fill the time allocated to it”. While this sentence features predominantly negative connotations when it comes to productivity, we can look at it from another angle, and deduce that the reverse must also be true – for a busy individual – one can reduce the amount of work time by simply having more things to do.

Here’s an example from my personal life. If I have a day where the only objective is to publish an article onto my website, this usually gets done towards the late evening, regardless of how much ‘free time’ I have beforehand. Conversely, if there was a day where I had to film a new guitar video, do a biology project, vacuum the house and submit an article, all that writing still ends up getting done, and actually takes less time than if it were my sole target for the day. What’s more, having a solid 12 hours or so to write something does not necessarily make that writing better. In all honesty, the results are roughly the same. My brain – alert to the flurry of impending due dates, is able to help channel some of that nervous energy into creating a useful product in half the time. Filling your daily routine with lots of (relevant) little jobs may seem a weird, counter-intuitive approach to tackling procrastination- but can have sensational consequences for anyone’s baseline levels of productivity.

So next time you’ve got an extended deadline for a particular project, be wary of our innate tendency to assume that the task at hand takes longer than it really does. You can attenuate the impact of Parkinson’s law on your day-to-day affairs by simply keeping busy. That way, in lieu of having little to nothing to show for the hours you put in, there should be plenty.

Arjav Poudel

An Existential Blind Spot

Predestination. Is it a tangible construct? Do the roads we walk all converge to a single, inevitable point? For a mind that reasons on first principles, the entire notion likely seems absurd. How can fate exist when there is free will? For them, it is the scientific method that is apotheosized – proofs and axioms are religiously adhered to. Despite an avid love for this discipline, one can only pray the irony is not lost here.

Speculation notwithstanding, the doctrine of fate has often inspired poignant references within fields extending from literature and the arts to television and the music industry. 

Sinnerman, by Nina Simone, is a powerful composition which- through the inherent simplicity of the lyrics – conveys a far deeper message on the subject of predeterminism. For the majority of first-time listeners, here are some immediate connotations that no doubt spring to mind: Religion, Judgement Day, and God. Many who do not practice the Christian Faith (or any faith for that matter) find themselves hastily dismissing an otherwise thought-provoking number since many of the lyrics appear to be suggestive of a higher power in which they do not believe. However – if one might steer clear of existential nihilism – the song is ubiquitous with the relevance of our actions. The decision of trying to do good, and it’s corresponding outcome – which we deem to be either ‘right or ‘wrong’. The moral dice roll that defines us.

Simone is telling a story. A Sinnerman – someone who has tainted his ‘virtue’ and/or the virtue of others is fleeing from the Day of Judgement. Those familiar with the concept of calendars should see the flaw in the plan. Time passes, whether we like it or not. Judgement is inevitable. To illustrate this idea is the paraphrased version of a fable below:

A servant in Baghdad comes home, white and trembling, and tells his master that he had encountered a woman whom he recognized as Death. She had made a threatening gesture in his direction. Borrowing his master’s horse, the servant gallops at top speed toward the distant city of Samarra where he believes even Death will not find him. His master later goes to the marketplace to confront Death.

Why the threatening gesture?” he asks.

“That was no threatening gesture, she replies. “Merely a jolt of surprise. I didn’t expect to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight. In Samarra.”

Sinnerman distills all of these sentiments into one fundamental question; When does running away become running to? The world is bound by the intricate silk threads of knowledge. Decisions of past, present and future. To (mis)quote BBC’s Sherlock, ‘Predestination is simply movement of the web’.

Certainly, there are – at least – two ways of looking at the song.

The composers likely intended it as a spiritual warning, with the message that we cannot run away from sin, but must confront it in prayer. It was also part of a whole genre of spirituals that were a protest against oppression and slavery.

But its meaning can be placed in a more general context: there is no avoiding the truth about one’s self. Nor is there point in confronting things we cannot change. God-fearing or not, there is beauty in that.

Arjav Poudel
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Atomic Habits – Book Notes

Read on for Atomic Habits – Book Notes.

Reading should be an integral aspect of anyone’s life. Personally, the book which has had the greatest impact on me this year is Atomic Habits by James Clear. 2020 has been the epitome of chaos and uncertainty, which is why this book- arguably the best in class for building and sustaining habits – is an astonishingly relevant and insightful read. As a result, I’ve tried to distill some of James Clears’ most crucial points and resent them below. 

Go buy your copy from Amazon here!

ATOMIC – SMALL BUT POWERFUL

 

Compound Interest

  • If we get 1% better each day by the end of the year, we’ll get x 37 better.
  • But if we get 1% worse each day our skill levels will drop to almost 0 by end of the year
  • Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it.

 

 

 

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement

 

– Progress is not linear, it’s compounding.

 

 

4 problems with goal setting

  1. Winners and losers have the same goals, therefore it can’t be the goal itself that differentiates people.
  2. Achieving a goal is only a momentary change. Temporary results. We should instead change the systems that caused those results in the first place.
  3. Goals restrict happiness with the implicit assumption that ‘once I reach the next goal, I’ll be happy’ results in continuously putting off happiness till the next ‘milestone’
  4. Goals are at odds with long-term-progress. Goals are milestones, systems are a way of life.

 

-identity change is the most powerful way to implement a new habit.

 

Habits → Identity

your behaviours are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are – either consciously or non consciously

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

Whatever your identity is now, you only believe it because you have proof of it.

Before marathon training, ask yourself: What would a marathon athlete do in this situation? eventually, by acting as a runner, you become one.

 

 

How to build a habit

1. Cue – triggers the brain to initiate action

2. Craving – provides a motivational force

3. Response – Action or habit we perform

4. Reward – End goal (what will inevitably cause us to repeat this action)

 

4 laws of behavior change

This how you build a habit and make it stick.

Make it obvious.

  • Design your environment around your cues.
  • Put fewer steps between yourself and good behaviour and more steps between you and bad behaviour.

Make it attractive.

  • Make the prospect of doing this task as enticing to you as possible

Make it easy.

  • Prime your environment.
  • Friction is a powerful force – if you want to get into the habit of going to the gym in the morning, try taking your gym clothes out you sleep. 
  • If you want to stick to playing the guitar, use (or buy) a stand and put your guitar on it in the room you most frequent during the day (either your bedroom or the living room). 
  • Try tying habits you want to gain in with existing habits so that those habits provide a ‘cue’ to initiate the additional desired habit.

Make it Satisfying.

  • Our brains have evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over long-term ones.
  • Akrasia is the hyperbolic discounting of tasks that don’t provide immediate/short-term rewards.
  • Use positive reinforcement so that you will be more likely to repeat good actions in the future.
  • What is immediately rewarded is repeated.
  • What is immediately punished is avoided.

 

Misconceptions

  • Most of us design outcome-based habits for ourselves when we should instead be focusing on identity change to really enforce the habits we want.
  • Don’t give yourself the chore of doing 100 pushups a day, give yourself further proof of your athletic identity by performing many pushups a day.
  • Confirmation bias – we tend to believe and readily accept the facts which already support our worldview.
  • Doing 100 pushups confirms we are athletic, therefore we are more likely to do it again. It has been ingrained in who we are. So we stick to it.

 

Quotes

“Build better systems, not goals.

“The score takes care of itself

“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of creating systems is to continue playing the game”

 

I hope you found this version of Atomic Habits – Book Notes to be informative whilst still being digestible.  For a case where these tips can apply, see my article here.

 

 

Arjav Poudel

Good Enough

Life is a rat race.

It has always been a rat race.

From the 200 million sperm ‘that could’, to the 7 billion that ‘got lucky. Although the opportunity to collaborate has often presented itself, the appeal for teamwork is often superseded by the impatience of individuals simply unable to sit back and twiddle their thumbs whilst the rest of the group catch up. The longing to butt heads is, no doubt, one of mankind’s stranger fetishes. 

The race makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Why wouldn’t we believe that distinctions and accolades – combined with a healthy dose of suffering – can improve our overall existence? The desire to be exceptional has sent many an explorer off toward pastures new, or persuade a world-class footballer never miss a training session despite all the wealth and admiration of millions. Why settle for an A when you could get an A*? 

The fight is hardwired into us. 

As such, the conventional model has stood its ground. Doing more stuff produces more traditional success. 

But then what? 

As Ryan Holiday puts it, “this is the point where a lot of smart, driven, born-lucky people drive themselves higher and higher… till they fall right off the edge. And no one hears the screams of the fallen. When you’re out, you’re out. Anyone who has ever managed to save themselves from the blind pursuit of success will press others to open their eyes and hunt for something more meaningful – before it’s too late. But we turn a deaf ear to their pleas. As far as we are concerned, they have been forced to pull out from the race and therefore are in no position to challenge our beliefs. We’re hardwired to drown out any voice that doesn’t tell us to ‘keep going’—any deviation from the ‘well-beaten track of achievement’ is to be roped off with immediate effect.

There is the idea that every human being falls somewhere on the spectrum of recognition. A deep-seated pecking order pulls the strings- invisible algorithms deciding who should have ‘status’, and who should not.  Hard work -> success -> wealth -> smiles is a doctrine that has been relentlessly skewered into us from the moment we could look up at the stars and dream of skipping the first step. 

“There are no shortcuts.”

For years people have been strong advocates of this ‘traditional path’ – get an education, find a well-paying job, and be set for life. No doubt it is a well-beaten track to the top. However, our journey is less of a pleasant meander through the moors and more a precarious cliff face, with many of the loose footholds and crumbling ledges complemented by fierce rockfalls and spontaneous(-ly terrible) weather. Getting to the top isn’t easy, we are told. In fact, it’s nigh-on impossible. But is that demoralizing statement supposed to deter or incentivize? Well, the sheer number of climbers should give you an answer. then again, so too should the faceless masses at the bottom. The ones who dedicated a lifetime toward launching themselves up, only to fall.

Lone drops in society’s ocean of average. 

And the darkest truth is that many of these people on the ground had, at least for a while, actually succeeded in their endeavours. They had tasted ‘summit air’. However, their short-lived happiness is a result of everything we know about success -for it tells us to never stop climbing. And the precious few who have what it takes to do that -fall right on over the edge.

We all think some external accomplishment is somehow going to change everything, but it hardly ever seems to.  You begin with the words ‘in hindsight’ and treat yourselves to a nice little fairytale truth be told, it doesn’t change the way you take your coffee in the morning, let alone how you see yourself. However, retrospect can hurt, especially when you’re reaching for dizzying heights. Looking back means looking down. And that’s something we are told to never do.

 

Optimum

Fame and money have a clear, well-defined peak. Building up an admirable reputation for yourself unlocks the floodgates for tidal waves of serendipity. Making the effort to get some way up this mountain can lead to better friendships, jobs, relationships, and more fun in general. But as that reputation expands, it will most likely precede you. Money definitely helps us meet our basic needs,

The first bit of financial surplus can be great as suddenly you can splurge on a lot more than basic amenities. but after your 3rd-holiday villa, things basically start to go downhill as people begin scrutinizing your life choices and harassing you on the street. . The “reward” becomes frequenting the headlines in gossip magazines and walking out the front door only to be ambushed by paparazzi. Privacy becomes non-existent. Secrecy suddenly comes arm-in-arm with a hefty price tag. Although, at the extreme end, you needn’t worry about this as your small army of security personnel will be all over it by the time you feel confident enough to leave your quintessential fortress of solitude. Although still enjoyable for some, it’s hard to prepare for.

So, what then? Should we seek anonymity in an effort to be content? Should we renounce the material world and live like a sage in the foothills of Cambodia?

Maybe we’re looking at it all wrong. instead of either pursuing the life of an icon (or that of a recluse), we should opt for a different kind of recognition. To paraphrase Brian Groat, “There are two types of fame in this world; Kardashian fame vs Munger fame.”  If you know who both of them are, the choice is clear. If you know only one, the choice is clearer still.

Bottom Line: choose Munger fame.

This pattern is infinite. A curve with a maximum value in the middle. The optimal amount of exercise to do in a day. The volume at which you will enjoy your music most. The hours of sleep you get per night. The number of people with whom you can maintain a solid relationship. Enzymes have an optimal temperature at which they function. Any lower and they cease to be efficient. Any higher and they simply die. There will always be an optimum value.

Having said this, what’s our optimal value. How much of things do we need? And will it ever be enough to be ‘happy’?

 

Hedonic Treadmill

The hedonic treadmill – or ‘hedonic adaptation’ is a theory propounding a phenomenon that people a baseline level of happiness consistently resets to a fixed value, regardless of circumstances that may befall them.

Here’s what Jean-Jacques Rousseau had to say about it in his 1754 Discourse on Inequality:

“Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.”

The hedonic treadmill theory argues that our circumstances alter our mood states temporarily and that there is a default emotional ‘set point’ we will always revert to.

It’s important to note that whilst this includes positive maxima such as winning the lottery, hedonic adaptation can also be taken to the other extreme, say – the loss of a limb. Though such an event would likely lead to a fundamental change in one’s lifestyle, the shapeless fringes of our emotion will inevitably expand to accommodate new hardship.

Can you remember the last time you were dreaming of some big purchase? Do you recall fantasizing about your increase in overall ‘happiness’? If you finally did acquire something ‘you’ve always wanted’, then hallelujah! it’s a great feeling – for a while. 

When things that once seemed unattainable are suddenly within reach, it can trigger an intense state of euphoria. but does this last? According to a bestselling author, he was mowing the lawn one day when his agent rang to inform him he’d made the New York bestseller list. The author thanked his agent, hung up and continued mowing his lawn.

The duration of your euphoria seems to share an inversely proportional relationship with the number of things you get.

We can become indifferent, desensitized to the pain and pleasure of simply ‘being’.

 

Perfectionist Syndrome

Perfectionists suffer most on the hedonic treadmill. 

 The official definition of a perfectionist is a person who refuses to accept any standard short of – well – perfection. But the truth is, having such intractable standards can have dangerous implications for the self and for others. Take Bill, for example.

Bill is your textbook perfectionist. Everything in Bill’s life to which he assigns meaning has simply got to be ‘perfect’. Oftentimes, when reality does not fall on par with his expectations, he can become overwhelmed by a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and, in most cases, even guilt.

Bill is a scientist who has been researching how stem cell therapy may lead to the formation of tumours and has just presented his findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology. He had spent the previous weeks painstakingly reviewing and restructuring data, whilst practising his speech such vigour that he was soon able to recite the entire script, verbatim. After reaching the last slide of his presentation, the room erupts with applause. Many people approach Bill afterwards to congratulate him on a stellar demonstration of his findings. On the surface, Bill is smiling, but deep down he’s kicking himself. He had wanted to deliver a flawless talk – but the occasional stutter and slip of the tongue had robbed him of that opportunity. Could the people near the back of the room even hear him? He has compared his speech to what could have been, and his ineffably high standards fail him once again. Akin to the cancer cells he’d been researching, Bill’s malignant thoughts start to divide exponentially, drowning out any the praise before it can register.

Driving this attack – a mutation, triggered by 5 words:

“I could have done better.”

Though the solutions of the future may lie (somewhat) in the past, it’s the answer is never as straightforward as recreating past events. Bill may have presented identical findings hundreds of times before that day, with ‘perfect results’. That should be evidence enough that he wasn’t going to make a single mistake. But, alas, he did. So, to refute Einstein, doing the same thing over and over again may well lead to different results. And expecting such an outcome certainly doesn’t insinuate madness. 

If you take nothing else away from this article, remember this: A historian can always outsmart history. A child reading about the Battle of Waterloo may arrive at the conclusion that he or she could have been a greater military leader than Napoleon. An that’s hindsight bias, in a nutshell.

The crux here is that irrespective of Bill’s actions in the past, the only thing he’s capable of controlling is his future actions. These actions are difficult because the outcome is not so easily predicted. But his impeccably high standards means Bill looks exclusively to the past for answers to the present that might help him in the future- all through the rose-tinted spectacles of hindsight. And, for most people, it’s especially difficult to look past hindsight and judge the past from the perspective of how it seemed at the time. For example, electromagnetism is a fundamental aspect of physics, one that took centuries of iteration and endeavour to conceptualise. Yet, when one thinks about the north pole end of a magnet being attracted to the south pole of another magnet, the framework of the electromagnetic theory feels simple!

For Bill, factoring in the idea of hindsight bias into his reflections is a virtually impossible feat. Looking back becomes a spiralling myriad of “what if’s” and “wherefores”. Remember, when you’re trying to climb up toward prominence, looking back means looking down- which is strongly advised against. Intuition and past data alone is nowhere near capable of setting a trajectory for future accomplishments.  For as long as Bill (and other so-called ‘perfectionists’) cannot fathom that, no achievement or standard will ever be ‘enough’

But what about all those success stories about the people who found satisfaction after landing their ‘dream job’? About those who sacrificed everything, only to spend the rest of their lives in bliss? Surely that’s an example of where we can take some evidence from the past and apply it directly to the future?

As it turns out, we’ve got the story backwards.

One should not aim to do the work with the hope that it will someday make them happy. There’s no point sitting passively, waiting for something to come along and excite us. instead, we should search for what we enjoy. Happiness should be the motivator enabling us to do the work itself. Becoming content is not the be-all and end-all – it’s not the final frontier. Perceiving it as such means that you will be forever chasing the rainbow. instead, one must acknowledge happiness as a stepping stone- a thrust int he direction we are headed – rather than the destination itself. It takes the form of the path in front of us, and anyone who recognises this will have a reason to smile. Perhaps we should eschew the luxury of panoramic vistas at the top in favour of some killer milestones we surpassed along the way.

Don’t be fooled: ‘everything you could ever want’ is as detrimental as it gets when it comes to human happiness. It’s just one more thing to get bored of having. 

There is a concept in Latin known as ‘Amor Fati’. It translates to ‘love of fate’. Perhaps this is the answer. We should aspire to love everywhere we’ve been in life, so one day we may learn to love the road we are on Granted, there may be no objective value for ‘enough’, and who can say if we’ll ever figure out where we’re going? But even though humans are stupendously adaptable creatures, with a stupendously adaptable stomach for ‘things’, but there’s always a point when we’ve had ‘too much’. Our success is personally governed by our actions. and, in turn, the success moulds our desires. 

Being ‘full’ is an incredibly subtle state of being, thus knowing when to rise from the table may be our single, greatest privilege. We will each know what is enough when the itch to sit back down is no longer there. When the tradeoffs are too great, and the struggle is no longer justified. If ever we lay still and realise there’s nowhere else to be but here. Amor Fati.

And so one should always be prepared to answer:

What are you chasing?

That’s good enough.

Arjav Poudel

The Information-Consumption Complex

I love food.

I love it and will consume and consume till my stomach and waistband creak in quiet concession that mutually-assured destruction will be achieved the instant I reach over for the last pizza slice.

I guess I’m just hungry. Both hungry for the zest of new and exciting foods as well as the more familiar – though no less thrilling – home dining experience. At home, you’re getting all the traditional dishes you could ever want. However, there comes a time in everyone’s life during which they become aware that there’s some limit to the variety of lunches and dinners on offer. The cook(s) in your family probably has a certain tried-and-tested method when preparing meals. You imagine – just for a moment- what it would be like to drift apart from the culinary bubble you grew up in. In spite of almost 2 decades spent eating mum’s food to my heart’s content, I have been guilty of such a desire. Over time, even the most sumptuous of spreads can become tedious if stirred, sifted and sieved by the same hand.

You begin to crave new experiences. The whim to tackle food that is foreign to your dining table. This intrinsic desire to rebel is testament to the fact that you have been cooped up and fed on a steady diet all your life.  Adolescence lowers our inhibitions, it increases our impulsive burners. You resolve to hit up fast-food joints –  to defy authority and their countless studies on the long-term consequences of fried chicken and chips.  We crave variety, hence the lack thereof must make everything taste just a little too bland. And in a world where there are around 40 000 McDonalds alone – almost 5 ‘Golden Arches’ for every single city on Earth – such figures are a clear indication that mass affordability and abundance. In the 21st Century – slow-release poison or not – fast-food is a roaring success.

Soon, before we ever acted upon those plans to run away and join the field of competitive eating, the time to flee the nest comes of its own accord. Home-cooked meals may no longer be an option, let alone the norm. At first, we are euphoric as the prospect of not having to chew through our mother’s (questionable) attempt at a medium-rare steak, is a deeply satisfying one. The beginning of a new consumption era. Instant Noodles and the occasional takeaway. On-demand grub can be considered a default option unless one is motivated enough to commit to cooking 7 days a week. Of course, living in Halls of Residence can also mean that someone else may be around to cook for you, but isn’t that sort of recreating the ambience of homemade meals all over again?

Combined factors of reduced time, willpower and money render ‘Cup A Soups’ and basically anything with a microwave label the new go-to option. As a student, one can perhaps enjoy a rare outing to some lavish restaurant or – better still – a  medium-priced all you-can-buffet. However,  such days are to be marked with a fat cross on the calendar because, liberating though they may be, we have been conditioned from an early age to conform to the status quo – to ‘shut up and eat our greens like every other kid’. This equates to mass consumerism along the ready meal aisle, regardless of potential alternatives.

Besides, our barren wallets simply cannot stretch far enough to accommodate any such entreaties of the stomach.

2 minute Mac and Cheese may be all very well and good for some. but for those still pursuing their gastronomical sweet spot, microwaveable dining may be a harrowing synonym for mundane dining. Even if one can afford to live off takeaways, how long before the sweet and sour sauce is too sour, or the duck strips lose their texture? Day after day, from disposable fork to disposable fork, the very monotony we sought release from returns to haunt us in an unconventional manner. Only this time, it’s not just our palate that is at risk, but our physical health also.

But before I land a brand deal with Joe wicks or Balance Box, this post isn’t about dissuading you from going all-in on the Mighty Meaty 2 for 1 special. As it happens, I’m more interested in the conception of an analogy to help illustrate my real motivations for writing this. To clarify the parallel between food and facts, and how to escape the rut. I like to call it the Information Consumption Complex.

Infoodmation.

 

I love knowledge.

I love it and will consume and consume until the bags underneath my eyes and brain creak in quiet concession that mutually-assured destruction will be obtained the instant I click on that last technology review.

When you’re younger you ask your parents and family about everything. Pretty much the entirety of our childhood can be distilled into a series of extended response questions. Incidentally, it can take but a few years at best to realise that their parents actually do not possess all of the answers. The capacity to believe the weird and the wonderful – our ‘gullibility’ is heightened due to the fact that whenever something unorthodox comes to light –  instead of being told to pause and ponder – the topic simply gets appended to an already long list of concepts we’ll ‘get when we’re older’. This can put an unceremonious end to the plethora of why’s and how’s. We then spend some time wallowing in a form of self-pity derived from our relative incompetence at perceiving the world around us.

Until we discover the internet.

On-demand information. Infinity pools of knowledge beneath one’s fingertips. A glimpse through the rose-tinted looking-glass of limitless serendipity. Suddenly our ‘insatiable’ urge to ask ‘why’ can in fact be sated by the reassuring presence of the Google search engine. It can get so much that when adults tell us something that doesn’t quite add up (too much television gives you square eyes, anyone?). Instead of stimulating our neural pathways to be critical vis-a-vis the legitimacy of their statement, we say ‘ok, I’ll just google it’. Of course, this is eventually discouraged also. “You won’t have your phones in the exam”, they say.

Yet, as technology gets smarter yet more straightforward, tapping into its resources becomes a reflex. The world wide web becomes an oracle to second-guess our every notion. It takes no amount of measurable effort to glance down at our phones, tap in a few keywords, and watch the display light up with a wealth of curated responses. As habitual creatures who religiously frequent the path of least resistance, Siri has never sounded sexier. Finding the answer is quick, easy and definitive; the triad of salient arguments justifying an exponential rise for the internet extravaganza. 

However,  it may one day dawn upon on the children who grew up with smartphones that, instead of perpetually looking online for answers, we may actually have to start coming up with some of our own. Soon it will be time to flee the nest in pursuit of such noble truths. 

Now, having our family sitting adjacent to us may no longer be an option, let alone the norm. At first, we are euphoric as the prospect of not having to sit through our father’s (questionable) monologues on ‘staying focused’ and ‘finding our feet’, is quite the liberating one. We have new teachers. An extended panel of guides and mentors to ensure we do indeed ‘find our feet’. Nowadays, many Universities record their lectures, offering students the chance to watch them online at their own pace. On-demand classes. Unless we are deeply motivated and committed to turning up at for the 7:45 “Introduction to the mechanics of Dark Solitons in Bose-Einstein Condensates” 7 days a week, flipping on our laptops and tuning into the live stream, proves a far more viable option.

Living in Halls of Residence can mean that someone else may be around to check over your work and corrections, but what use will they be in the Exam Room? Also, don’t they have their own classes to sleep through?

Combined factors of reduced time, willpower, and freedom render second-hand textbooks, hours poring over dated articles, and fruitless back-to-back email correspondence with academic advisors the go-to option(s). As a student, the only time one can anticipate even an ephemeral sense of accomplishment is when some convoluted idea in the module clicks into place a little (considering everything else that allegedly happens at Uni, that’s saying a lot). However, sporadic ‘eureka’ moments are to be marked with a fat cross on the calendar because – exhilarating as they may be – the undergraduate minds that have been conditioned to ‘shut up and memorise the quadratic formula’  simply cannot stretch far enough to accommodate such entreaties of the higher education syllabus.

For once, the internet may not have all the answers – or it may have too many answers. Whatever the case, our analytical reasoning isn’t quite up to the mark of scouring through the vast swamps of data contrived by the web and its machine learning algorithms. Extracting only the most relevant pieces of information from said data is a skill that is often taught, though rarely learnt.

In follows that, when it comes to food – and, incidentally, the virtual world- it’s not hat we can’t find what we’re looking for; it’s often the case we are spoilt for choice. it rests upon our frail, frail shoulders, to make the right one. We often claim that the problem is that we are inundated with options, and often they aren’t exactly what we’re looking for. Consequently, we set up filters. We filter our searches for the concepts most relevant to us. We restrict our shopping to ensure a diet more suited to personal needs. However, evaluative literature has demonstrated that implementing better filters does not diminish the sense of overload; it intensifies it.

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter success.”

 

Signal vs Noise 

Information overload actually takes two forms. One is called  ‘situational overload’ and the other, ‘ambient overload’.

Celebrated Author Nick Carr is the one responsible for coining such terms. He defines situational overload as the classic ‘needle-in-a-haystack problem’: “You need a particular piece of information – in order to answer a question of one sort or another – and that piece of information is buried in a bunch of other pieces of information. The challenge is to pinpoint the required information, to extract the needle from the haystack, and to do it as quickly as possible.” When people are complaining that they can’t find the answer, they are usually referring to situational overload. However, according to Nick, the phrasing of their complaint might be a little problematic.

Whenever a new information medium comes along,” he begins “we tend to quickly develop good filtering tools that enable us to sort and search the contents of the medium. In general, He makes a case that, although the amount of information available to us has exploded in recent years, the problem of situational overload has continued to abate. Alas, there are still moments where our filters strike hay instead of the needle, but for most questions, most of the time, search engines and other digital filters, or software-based, human-powered filters like email or Twitter, are able to serve up relevant, reasonable answers in the blink of an eye.

Carr argues that situational overload is not the problem. “When we complain about information overload, he explains, “what we’re usually complaining about is something known as ‘ambient overload’. Ambient overload doesn’t involve needles in haystacks. It involves haystack-sized piles of needles. We experience ambient overload when we’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the never-ending pressure of trying to keep up with it all. We keep clicking links, keep hitting the refresh key, keep opening new tabs, keep checking email inboxes and RSS feeds, keep scanning Amazon and Netflix recommendations – and yet the pile of interesting information never shrinks.

The cause of situational overload is too much noise. The cause of ambient overload is too much signal.

So what to do about this?

slow down.

 

The Tipping Point 

2020. Obesity rates are soaring. Work-related stress is on the rise. There’s so much to be consumed and swallowed whole out there. It is truly the age of convenient commerce.

We get tired of buffets because all-you-can-eat goes from fun to nauseating it takes to finish the entree. In the same respect, we can only stare down the infinite chasm of information for so long before we just can’t take it anymore. At this point, we could package the food in small takeaway boxes, tuck this away into our fridges and enjoy them in your own time – just could take distilled notes and package them into bite-size chunks for sustainable and prolonged consumption. But even refrigerated food goes off eventually. The note-taking process goes stale from time-to-time. we have to slow down. Go easy on the extra fries. Mediate the impulse to pull that all-nighter. Our wellbeing is on the line. And our overall happiness very much falls into that bracket.

Nothing stays enticing forever. But addiction thrives off our inability to grasp such a fact. The more we eat, the more we have to eat. the more we scroll, the more we have to scroll. Knowledge is power, but even the best system’s fall apart with an infinite supply. Suddenly, 3 double-decker cheeseburgers and 36 Wikipedia links later, we are back on the banal cycle of ‘eat, eat, eat, repeat’. Life becomes an endless trudge through the oozing slime pits of trifling routine. At this point, you seek the opposite of complexity. You just want it all to make sense. Your childhood ambition to plunge ever deeper into the unknown is now inverted by the urge to actually your findings. To dumb down what you’ve learned- to cut back on the bite-sized and the deep-fried. There’s only one thing for it.

Time to go home.

 

Full Circle

So, you crave home food now?

This antithetical truism is loosely based on the psychological phenomena that you tend to miss what is no longer readily available – despite the fact you may have completely overlooked its existence when the ladle was within arm’s length. As well as being the whole idea behind Passenger’s – ‘Let Her Go’, the notion invites a few more interesting implications.

If food and knowledge are truly on parallel lines, it holds that home-cooked meals are the equivalent of timeless anecdotes; tips and tricks of the trade from the people closest to you. Just as you often fail to acknowledge how much you missed your mum’s cooking till it’s on a plate in front of you, It’s easy to forget about the impact that speaking to those that know you on a personal level can have. Despite the best efforts of Scienorld to prove that fundamental proof that logic is what convinces the ‘rational human’ to change his or her mind, Some of our most fundamental hopes, dreams and beliefs are gifts from those we love. Our true religion – embedded in the heart by the very few with unfettered access.

“Facts don’t change people’s minds. Friends and family do.”

The voices of our nearest and dearest are also far more likely to ‘hit different’, as it were. Let it be said that I enjoy the conveyor belt of insightful tidbits as much as the next man, though if it came to choosing between traditional Japanese dining vs Yo Sushi, I know where I’d rather be.

The question is, where are you going?

We leave home, nauseated at the very mention of chicken casserole – though it is with the very promise of the same casserole that we are lured back, many years later. So try for balance. If you get bored, eat more takeaway food. And every once in awhile, go to the best buffet in town. This virtuous cycle of consumption hint toward the revolutions of a wheel that sustains the paradox of ‘Information Consumption’ itself. It keeps both spokes of overload -situational and ambient – in check. Maintaining this sort of feedback system is critical as too much of anything can prove detrimental toward long-term satisfaction – To achieve the recommended daily dose of ‘infoodmation’, ensure you strike an equilibrium between organic and processed. And remember – go home once in a while. Whenever your digestive tract has been put through its paces, know that there’s nothing a solid helping of grandma’s apple pie, followed by her best advice – can’t remedy.

 

Bonus Round

After you indulge in sweet childhood memories, you don’t have to leave it all there. Take a classic recipe that is known and loved, then tweak it a little with some extra herbs and spices. This is akin to obtaining some profound knowledge/advice, absorbing, assimilating, and ultimately adding to it – superimposing your own insights. No two experiences are the same, though – with a little tinkering – the same bare-boned wisdom can take on many relevant forms.

Make it personal.

Finally, and you’d better hear me out this, why not take some of that inspiration from your favourite dishes and make something from scratch. Not just blindly following some recipe – but crafting one yourself. Not just a Cook anymore, but a Chef. To create your own food – your own ideas – is to assemble everything you’ve learned, every morsel of wisdom you’ve ever acquired over the years, chop it up finely, and let it simmer slowly as the creative juices ebb and flow. There could be no better way to savour the meal. No better way to take it all in.

Locate → Consume → Create.

Just some food for thought…

 

Further Information:

Overload, Situational and Ambient – ROUGH TYPE (article)

Arjav Poudel
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Debunking Human Sheep

Let’s talk about sheep.

Not really interested in the fluffy kind, no matter how adorably docile they may appear. For now,  it’s all about intrinsic sheep. The thing behind our need for uniformity – that tempestuous yen to fit in and appear ‘normal’.  The sort that lives inside us and pulls its wool over our eyes. Alas, the electric pace of innovation egged on by the complications of our time has not created this. Evidence of copycat behaviour is ubiquitous within our society, with telltale signs appearing everywhere from politics to primary school.

This raging thirst to be wanted – it’s been around for a while.

There often comes a time in our lives when we have resisted authority in some way. Broken some rule or code of conduct. If done in school, it can mean a visit to the headteacher’s office. During the subsequent interrogation, you will be encouraged to discuss the misdemeanour(s) in detail. It’s possible that you may be offered immunity as a quid pro quo for incriminating others.

But if the ‘guilty party’ consists of your friends, it becomes that much harder to start talking. If we refuse to cooperate, the authority figures often grow frustrated and attempt to emotionally blackmail us into telling the truth. Going on about how we’re obstructing the inquiry through our incredibly ‘selfish’ decision to not sell out the perpetrator(s). We are made to feel bad we didn’t tell on Max for swearing in class, even though Max is our friend and – had he been in our position – would exert just as much effort to keep his lips sealed. Granted, if the incident is a little more pressing than the use of expletives, perhaps we should consider the pros and cons of coming clean. However, scrutinising our every action and the chain of ethical implications bound to them isn’t an ability we are born with. Sticking up for those we care about, however, might well be.

Belonging is a basic human need, and any sense of righteousness can dissipate when joining the crowd means betraying our congenital sense of morality. It’s why people can be happy making others unhappy. A respectable company can be caught permitting corporate abuses. Soldiers can celebrate the murder of the ‘enemy’. A group of kids could take it upon themselves to target the most ‘vulnerable’ member of the class, and give them hell…

This is us.

Unfortunately, that’s where most people leave it. They seem content enough with the fact that mankind are creatures of mimicry and hardly ever think to probe deeper.

To find out why.

But one such person who has had an in-depth look at this psychological phenomenon of ‘human sheep’ is successful internet writer, Tim Urban. He writes popular, long-form blog posts on his website, Wait, But Why. In one such post, Urban reveals that humanity comes pre-inoculated with a fundamental longing to be accepted. A desire to be desired. To further understand the origins of this particular insanity, we must examine where 21st Century Tribalism really came from:

Evolution.

“Evolution does everything for a reason,” Urban explains. He takes you back to Ethiopia, 50 000 BC, where your Great Ancestor lived as part of a small hunter-gatherer community.

In those days tribes were absolutely critical. They offered a chance for food, shelter and friendship in a time when all 3 were made scarce. For people like your great Ancestor, nothing in the world could be more crucial than fitting in. Whether or not one was trusted – even respected – by their fellow tribe members, could literally mark the difference between life and death. Being a people pleaser was pivotal in cementing one’s social standing. It drastically improved your likelihood of coexisting in harmony. Furthermore, gaining the favour of those in seats of authority meant that your position in the tribe was much less likely to be jeopardized. As long as the populace had nothing but positive remarks to shower, life would pan out swimmingly.

Conversely, the worst-case scenario for an individual all those millennia ago would be if – or when – others got talking behind closed doors. Dark muttering. Ripples, murmurs, rumours in the dark. Initially, if it was just the one person who grumbled about your lack of hygiene, you needn’t lose any sleep over it. However, word spreads fast in a closed community. The ones singing your praises today could be cursing your name tomorrow. Impressionability is a double-edged sword. if enough people disapproved of you, your status within the tribe would plunge. And if it got really bad, you’d be kicked out – an outcast left for dead. Or worse, hunted for sport.

For those of you who have watched Black Mirror, you may find this particular episode to be adjacent to the sinister levels of conformism and social protocol allegedly required to qualify as a ‘well-to-do’ citizen.

Living in such a close-knit bubble meant that there was really no life beyond the village. They couldn’t just drop it all and leave town when relations were souring. Being socially accepted was everything. Because of this, humans evolved an over-the-top obsession with what others thought of them—a dark lust for social approval, coupled with a debilitating fear of rejection. Though it was by no means irrational at the time, it did mean that conventionalism was destined to play God from the precise moment that one became aware of what it meant to judge and be judged.

Ideal conditions for the perfect carbon copy.

As such, the incessant measure of looking over one’s shoulder to see what everyone else is doing has created an interesting social heuristic. Humans have adapted to inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what is of merit through imitating our peers. The need for organized humanity kept us alive back then…

And the thing about evolution is that it’s painfully slow.

That’s right. Our bodies and minds are definitively hardwired for life in 50,000BC. Irrespective of the fact that everything else has come leaps and bounds, our biology is left choking on the dust. Consequently, modern humans are stuck with a number of obsolete traits – one of which being a fetish for tribal-style social survival in a world where social survival is no longer a palpable concept.

So no matter how sophisticated someone thinks they are, if they find themselves making a conscious effort to be part of the crowd, they’re about as backwards on the evolutionary timescale as it gets.

Tribes continue to hold awesome power over day-to-day affairs. As worldviews become increasingly polarised, this has re- accentuated the importance of identifying a group within one is able to express themselves freely without fear of exploitation. Three immense dividers – religion, politics and race – have so far proved the primary agitators of wars and mass destruction in our short and bloody history (the irony of such establishments is far from lost here). 

Ancient social code states that we should be always and forever have the backs of ‘our people’. As such, we get the Nationalists and Imperialists. Liberals and Conservatives. Activists  – who can make each other extremist. Degrees of bias (conscious and unconscious) incentivize us to stand up for the groups that we belong to and shun anyone on the outside. It is such a basic instinct, yet we have been grappling with it for as long as anyone can remember.

This ‘them vs us’ mentality can also lead to insidious acts of corruption. Modern politicians regularly assume highly-paid positions in the private sector after leaving office – often working with industries they once managed. Capitol Hill is notorious for members of Congress giving jobs to the children of friends in return for their friends giving jobs to their children. The term has been coined, ‘reciprocal nepotism’. Politicians are, essentially,  “profit centres” for their nearest and dearest.

In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, psychologist Jonathan Haidt asserts that – to both liberals and conservatives – members of the opposing party are not simply ‘wrong’; they are deliberately engaging in ethical malpractice. They are morally flawed and can even be dangerous. “Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings,” Haidt argues, “to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.” Thus, he insists, morality welds people together into cohesive factions but renders us utterly uncomprehending when it comes to the motivations of other groups, no matter how reasonable they may be.

It’s not us, so why should we care?

We are herd animals. from our vantage point, it makes absolute sense to follow the pack – it certainly goes a long way toward explaining why we are so predictable. That’s why big corporate businesses can make billions upon billions of dollars, selling the same stuff over and over again. The command has become a parasite leeching off our better judgement

Follow the crowd. Follow the crowd. Follow the crowd.

And that’s the mimetic trap: No matter how unnerving it may be to copy others, it hurts to leave the group, and there’s nowhere to go. It dissociates the social reward signal from the rest of objective reality — you can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable. we don’t even hear the sheep bleating instructions in our ear until it’s too late.

And since our 50,000-year-old convictions are set up to hone in on what other’s think of us, any evidence of our authentic voice and true feelings get pushed further and further into the abyss. If we think of individuality and conformism as a dual-headed muscle, the former will undergo disuse atrophy whilst the latter becomes very swollen indeed. Eventually, we’ll forget we were even capable of owning an opinion, let alone expressing one.

So, adults, next time you feel the young people in your life aren’t complying with your wishes, scratch past surface-level problems. Frowning in the face of 50, 000 years worth of stagnant social norms won’t make them go away. Attempting to guilt-trip kids into soiling the trust of their mates might not do the trick.  Oftentimes, the people who make us feel bad about these things really underestimate the power that evolution holds over us – over all of us. Handing a tribe member to authoritative figures (often seen as ‘the enemy tribe’) is the ultimate betrayal. It’s them vs us all over again. Despite how our awareness of moral truth has progressed as we mature, the primal instinct to defend someone we consider friend or family cannot be ignored. Its a part of our genetic makeup; part of who we are.

Instead, one must acknowledge the intense need to ‘fit in with the tribe’. You can’t fight it outright. But there is hope. Yes, ideologies predispose. But they can never predetermine.

It’s important to note that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another does have positive connotations. The prevailing hive mind was a consequence of “shared intentionality,” – “the ability and willingness to engage with others in collaborative, co-operative activities that featured joint goals and intentions In other words, ‘teamwork made dream work’.

A prime example would be that while foraging, one person tugs on a branch while the other plucks the fruit, and, as a result, they both have food on their plates.” When early humans began to share intentions, their capacity to hunt, raise children, and raid other groups for resources increased exponentially. Everyone on the team – or ‘tribe – were now able to envision a mental representation of the task, acknowledge that his or her partners shared the same representation, and collectively carry out said representation in such a manner that allowed each and every member of the team to indulge in the spoils later that day.

Finally, when it comes to conformism, there are always anomalies. Those who do not quite fit the model. Individuals who have not only failed to grasp the significance of blending in, but who have in fact made every conscious effort under the sun to stick out. At the time, they have been branded heretics, fools, blasphemers, extremists and crazy. But to imagine a world where no one dared stick their neck out; no one dared to pioneer, is to envision a land void of human progress. With a lack of incandescence, the world would become a cold and broken record.

The same dumb song stuck on repeat.

There are times where we should defend the status quo. But there are also times where we should challenge it. Striking a balance between fitting in and standing out is the only way forward.

The only way to get anywhere.

Arjav Poudel
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How to Make your Mark

 

When I was 10, we went on a family holiday to Blackpool – the paragon of British sophistication. 

The tram service, I mean.

We were there for around 4 nights and the highlight of the trip was definitely the day we spent at Pleasure Beach- the UK’s most ‘ride-intensive’ theme-park, home to Britain’s biggest and fastest rollercoaster, ‘The Big One’. 180 seconds of pure magic. Naturally, I dragged my dad on. It was sublime – a total out-of-body experience which, surprisingly, dipping and diving through tracks at 100km/h had little to do with.

No, my sense of the third person was more to do with the fact that there are apparently 33 million different gods in Hindu mythology… It took 3 minutes and a migraine to learn all that the hard way.

Thanks again, dad – impressive recall.  Maybe next time you could pray for your life a little quieter?

Later that day, we stepped into the shade of a café for something refreshing. we’d been walking around for a few hours (queuing for things mostly) – so the rest of my family weren’t thrilled at the prospect of jumping in line again. But there were ulterior motives behind the choice of this particular cafe. Plastered on the windows were posters of bone-shaped containers filled with vibrant, semi-frozen liquid – ‘Slush Puppies’.

We all got one. My bother and I were both obnoxiously eager and ended up demanding a sample of every flavour (sour cherry, pink bubblegum, orange, mixed fruit, lime, tropical and blue raspberry). Dad – sporting an intermittent tremor from his (brief) encounter with G-force and the divine counsel, went for a plain orange. Mum chose neutral territory and got 3 random flavours. In fact, every other grownup in the room seemed to also be limiting themselves to a single or double flavour. At the time, I remember thinking, ‘don’t ever let me get this old.‘

The first sip was exquisite. I was revelling in my decision. In hindsight, I guess I must have thought myself a connoisseur mixologist -some bold pioneer setting benchmarks in the history of chilled beverages. Such zest was bound to serve me well in future. That is, if I’d actually been any good…

It wasn’t long after I’d worked my way through the first few layers that I noticed the vibrant rainbow colours of my drink gradually morphing into something rather sinister. Thick murky sludge, not unlike the gunk covering December streets in the northern hemisphere. It was also starting to taste funny. At first, I assumed it was just my unruly imagination trying to violate rainbow-flavoured art. But one glance at the small pools collecting in my 3-year-old brother’s eyes confirmed rising fears: we’d set ourselves a trap.

Thanks to an agglomeration of summer heat and poor life choices, the experience blazed from candied frost in a cup to tepid freezer residue faster than Dad could say ‘Shiva’. Within an hour of purchasing the ‘delight’, it looked/tasted vile. However, not wishing to appear anything short of enlightened visionary, I made a point of smacking my lips and patting my stomach… before promptly emptying the contents into a nearby bush. So much for mixology as an adult pursuit. My future now depended on living up to the Asian stereotype  – ‘solve for x’.

Ok, like every good children’s story, there’s a moral to this one.

Besides learning enough religious stuff for this lifetime (and the next few hundred after that ;)),  and that passing my exams was the only thing perched between me and a 1 way ticket back to Kathmandu’s squatting toilets, it was the first time the phrase ‘less is more’ really hit home.

*Start Post Here*

Whenever you find yourself acting on creative impulse, whether it be starting a blog, novel, YouTube channel, or just any sort of business, make a point of asking yourself:

WHAT THE &#%! IS GOING ON.

First of all, let me be plain about this. I’m no expert. The information I’m sharing with you has been taken from many reputable sources (some of which I’ll link below) with just a little dusting of my own experiences to add some context. I do not – and never will – claim to be all clued up when it comes to ‘running with ideas’ or ‘cultivating one’s artistic expression’. Seriously, what does that even mean? But with the modest intention of providing some omnirelevant, worthwhile content, I have presented my thoughts and findings in the form of this blog post.

Market-Fit

Having clear objectives when starting a new venture is essential if you want to get the most out of the journey it will take you on. Finding out what you’re doing, and why paves a clearer path toward your next biggest question; Who? Who the hell is this actually for?!! Yes, we know it can be readers, viewers, creators. But what sort of people are we interested in?

This is something else that requires categorisation. It goes without saying that you should definitely look to market something if you’ve poured emotion, ambition and effort into getting it consumer-ready. The cost-energy requirement for building, maintaining, and upgrading a product is not to be neglected. But if your target market is 18-30-year-old women, a handbook detailing the ins and out of Post-Menopausal Pilates probably won’t sway things in your favour. Along the same vein, there would be no sense in creating an online course on racking up the Tinder numbers for anyone past their prime (though I’m told a handful of senior citizens are really killing it out there). And please, don’t consider starting a YouTube Series calling to boycott the local steakhouse over their refusal to entertain the idea of ‘Meatless Mondays’. If word gets out, your mugshot will be stuck on dartboards and clay pigeons up and down the country.

Just a literal heads-up 🙂

I appreciate that – to most self-respecting folk – this all seems pretty self-explanatory. But what’s perhaps even more dangerous than missing the mark is not even aiming for something specific in the first place. Adopting a mentality often phrased along the lines of;

“‘I don’t have a target audience, really. I want this to be for everyone.

Look, it never hurt to dream big. Consider authors such as JK Rowling whose creations have captivated the souls of young and old alike. Her words are the stuff of epics and box-office-hits. But for a first-time writer seeking to make his/her mark on paper, this can also be quite misleading.

Let’s think about what it actually means to make something ‘for everyone’. It’s saying that your product appeals to a broad spectrum, flitting between the dividing lines of age, interests and experiences. History has proven to us time and time again that it’s certainly possible. there are household names in every genre under the sun – people accepted and cherished by Baby Boomers and Generation Pandemic alike. However, I’m sure it’s also possible to mix the perfect slush drink and enjoy it ice cold. Unfortunately, this takes time and patience. Indefinite amounts. When trying to create something for everybody, you’re effectively distilling the nectar of your product and attempting to spread it over an astronomical range. It will be spread too thin. True, your work may be exposed to countless wandering eyes. But will that be enough for them to buy your book, subscribe to your channel, bulk-order your merch, join your email list?

Unlikely.

Instead, why not ask yourself what would happen if, instead of trying the whole crowd-pleaser thing, you honed in your interests and appealed to a specific group of people? This group is allowed to be quite general, provided it can be distinguished from other societal subsets easily.

That way, you get to make stuff for whoever you want to make for. There’s no longer a need to chop and change your design into a one-shoe-fits all. Granted, the sample size maybe a little smaller. You may initially cringe at the thought of compromising on all the people that could’ve truly been inspired by your content. Numbers equal profits, right? But let’s look at it this way: Ensuring 10 people are 90% convinced to buy an iMac is far better than 90 people who are 10% convinced. It underlines the difference between Apple potentially earning tens of thousands or – simply put – nothing.

In saying this, it’s unnecessary to fuss over minute details during the fetal stages of your product. Market research is hugely over-rated at the start, especially when every other risk is so small compared to the myriad of potential customers. Selling your first product will teach you more about your consumers than if you were to commit that time learning the theory instead. Tread fast and take light touches. Build something that you would want to see out there. In doing so, intuition will trump crowd suggestions every time.

After the earliest phases, connecting with your customers becomes the pivotal action. When you explicitly define your target audience, you focus on forging a relationship with them and only them. The aim becomes to understand their biggest problems and come up with an array of viable solutions.

As a brand, you don’t want to appeal a little to the big crowd, you want to appeal a lot to the die-hards.

“If you’re talking to everybody, you’re not talking to anybody.”

Cherry-pick your customers. If you already know what kind of people they are, then great. If not, get the gist of it, but don’t go overboard. Investigate, don’t interrogate. Learn to speak their language – it can enable you to step into their shoes and find out what piques interest. Learn of their careers hobbies and aspirations. Discover what matters to them and what doesn’t. Send an introductory email explaining a little about yourself and your mission, then ask them to hit reply with a little something in return. It’s a great place to start. After gleaning the essentials, it’s time to incorporate that knowledge into your product.

 One of Seth Godin’s email newsletters sums up this post in perfect style :

 

“It might not be for you”

If you walk into a noisy bar and ask why they don’t have Chopin on the jukebox, they’re unlikely to accommodate you. The same is true if you go to a BBQ joint and insist on sushi. Most of the brands we truly care about stand for something. And the thing they stand for is unlikely to be, “whatever you want, we have it.” It’s also unlikely to be, “you can choose anyone and we’re anyone.” A meaningful specific can’t possibly please everyone. That’s the deal.

 

Nailing the basics can set you up for a lifetime of wins. Authenticity and finding one’s voice is vital, thus stepping outside your comfort zone to add a thrilling twist to your stock is by no means discouraged. But oftentimes, when seeking to mix all the marvellous slush-puppy flavoured ideas into some tasty entrepreneurial blend, the result can be really quite garish…

 

You can quote me on that.

 

 

Further Information:

1000 True Fans – Kevin Kelly (blog post)

The 5 Finger Trigger – David Perrell (essay)

Arjav Poudel
, ,

This is a Simulation

 

Before we begin – in order to get the most out of this article – try and keep an open mind. Make some effort to bear with me as the concepts we are about to unravel require earnest contemplation. However, if you find every word that follows to be utterly nonsensical, then please, by all means, try something else.

Still here?

Then, let’s go.

 

 

Ultimately, the concept of ‘being’ relates to 2 questions:

Who am I?

And what, is this?

Any potential theories we may encounter in the search for true meaning will assuredly fail to emulate the simplicity of the above questions that led us there.

Nonetheless, here’s an idea:

We may be living in a program. A simulated reality. Everything there is was, or will ever be – an illusion.

One question before you slam this browser tab shut:

How would you know?

 

But it’s Real…?

Our intuition cries out, of course. It all feels too real to be a simulation. The weight of the toast in the hand, the rich aroma of butter slathered upon it – it’s all white noise trickling along the periphery of our sentience. How could such sumptuous sophistication possibly be faked?

People often use Darwinian evolution as an argument that our views must accurately reflect reality. To them it’s obvious that our perceptions must be lucid when comes to reality for, otherwise, we would have been made extinct centuries ago.

Advocates of this idea are therefore insinuating that those who once saw existence for what it was boasted a serious competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately. Thus, Natural Selection made it more likely for them to pass on genes that enabled increasingly accurate perceptions.

As a result, we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately.

Iron-clad biology, right?

But Donald D. Hoffman, professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine has disproved this argument with a single, irrefutable theorem:

According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.

-Donald D. Hoffman

In other words, someone who is fine-tuned to see only the ‘relevant’ parts of the universe can never be at a disadvantage to someone who can see the whole universe. therefore evolution – instead of opening our eyes, may actually be closing them in accordance with what is actually there versus we actually need to see in order to survive and thrive.

Now the doctrine of false reality has been somewhat embedded in the back of your mind, we can now delve into the origins of this speculation.

As it turns out, Simulation Theory is older than the bible.

 

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave:

Imagine you are one of many prisoners in a cave. You’ve all been in the cave since birth and are chained so that your legs and neck are immobile. Everyone is forced to look at a blank wall in front of them. Behind you is a fire. objects would move in front of the fire, casting shadows on the wall. These shadows are all you’ve ever known.

You cannot look at anything behind or to the side of you – you must look at the wall in front of you. As you’ve never had a chance to spot the ‘real’ objects before, you would take the projections of the thing to be the thing themselves. There would be no way to contradict ourselves.

 

The shadows become the objects. the simulation becomes the reality.

 

Our rate of progress

In 1982, ‘Pong’ was released to the world. It was a tennis-style game developed by Atari inc. in which players could compete. It featured simple two-dimensional graphics.

 

Now, scarcely 4 decades later, the progress in computer and information technology has been unprecedented. To say that video games have evolved is like saying describing light speed is ‘fast’ or the universe as ‘big’. The 1980s saw the arrival of 2D graphics, with 3D graphics emerging a few years later.

 

 

 

Now the 21st century has been ground zero of another technological explosion:

Virtual Reality.

The accelerated rate of progress when it comes to VR is by no means an over-exaggeration. Computers are able to power virtual reality simulators with extraordinary persuasive capacity. Computing power is directly correlated to the gaming experience.

Alongside this, the more we learn about how senses operate and how our brain functions, the more we will be able to create. This sustains the virtuous cycle between improvements in software (our minds and how they work) and hardware (the raw computational power required to go ever deeper into the unknown).

Even if the rate of progress diminishes by a factor of 1000 relative to its current trajectory, the extrapolated data still reveals that VR will, in due course, become indistinguishable from reality. When this occurs exactly is anybody’s guess, though it may be closer than you think.

Even the developers of such cutting-edge gadgetry will – at some point- find it immensely challenging to distinguish fiction from non-fiction. Knowledge and technology get better and better until, eventually, we could simulate just about anything.

But here’s my question:

How long before we could simulate everything.

No, hang on, better question:

What are the odds that we already have?

We could all be living in one great, big virtual state right now. but please, don’t take my word for it…

“Given that we’re clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality and those games could be played on any set top box or any PC, and their would probably be billions of computer or set top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds we are in base reality are one in billions.”

-Elon Musk

One in billions. I’ll leave you to ponder that a moment.

 

Ancestor Simulations: Why Us?

Nick Bostrom – a Swedish philosopher from the University of Oxford – has a lot to say on this. He’s currently deemed a leading mind in the field of the anthropic principle and has boiled down the proposed scenario into 3 possible outcomes. In his words:

  1. Intelligent civilisations never get to the stage where they can make such simulations, perhaps because they wipe themselves out first.

  2. Intelligent civilisations arrive at that point but then choose for some reason not to conduct such simulations.

  3. We are overwhelmingly likely to be in such a simulation.

He has postulated that an advanced civilization may opt to run “ancestor simulations” with the salient objective of ‘simulating’ their Homo Sapien forefathers. He explained it like this:

” It’s possible the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.”

We are among the simulated rather than the original.

Ring a bell?

He also said this:

“That type of posthuman simulator would need sufficient computing power to keep track of “the detailed believe-states in all human brains at all times.” It would essentially need to sense observations (of birds, cars, etc) before they happened and provide simulated detail of whatever was about to be observed.

In the event of a simulation breakdown, the director — whether teenager or giant-headed alien — could simply “edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.”

Fixing the glitches as they occurred. Neat.

The number of simulated realities could run, ad infinitum. This abstraction becomes slightly easier to swallow once you understand that the artificial neural nets we are working on today are already being trained for recursive self-improvement/duplication in a simulated environment.

It is also speculated that – besides humans – these simulations may be the handiwork of advanced ‘Superintelligent’ AI or even an extraterrestrial race from the other side of the cosmos.

However, we must appreciate that this can seem a rather circular argument. If some super-intelligence were running simulations of their own “real” world, they could be expected to base its physical principles on those in their own universe, just as we do. In that case, the reason our world is mathematical would not be because it runs on a computer, but because the “real” world is also that way.

Bostrom’s three possibilities are also of an anthropocentric nature. It is an attempt to say something profound about the Universe by extrapolating from what humans in the 21st Century are up to. Predictions are all about comparing and contrasting events in the present.

In trying to conceive of what super-intelligent beings might do, or even what they would consist of, it’s only fitting that we start from ourselves. But that should not obscure the fact that we are then spinning webs from a thread of ignorance. The conclusion we arrive at is such that it boils down to: “We like science fairs and realistic games, I bet super-beings love them too!”

Alas, the truth is entirely unknown, but the entire premise of where we came from remains an interesting and impactful shower thought.

People fail to notice the direct link between evolution and upgrade. The idea of constant betterment. Constant improvement. We are all what you’d call trial and error. Existence is a trial because we are defined by a perpetual attempt to get better. Every day our task is to be the better teacher, friend, sibling, lover. But we have also made an error in setting our sights on perfection. We can never reach perfection. But we will never stop trying. And so the iteration continues…

One of the main arguments against then Simulation Hypothesis is that the computational power required to simulate everything – like to the subatomic level – would be practically impossible. Quantum computing would need to have a baby with the space-time continuum.

But who said you need to recreate absolutely everything? The minimal requirement lies within the confines of our virtual consciousness.

To put it simply, not every tiny detail need be created at once. Just enough to make us believe…

 

Schrodinger’s Cat

Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an Austrian-Irish physicist who came up with this infamous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat.

The idea is that a cat would be placed a box with some radioactive material and left to its own devices for a few hours. After the allocated time transpires, one must open the box to determine the fate of the feline.  For the sake of the thought experiment, there was a 50 per cent chance the cat is dead and a 50 per cent chance the cat is alive.

Now, common sense would have us believe that the cat is already either alive or dead. Hence, we open the box to discover the truth.

But quantum physics tries to tell us that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time – that is until somebody opens up the box to verify. This is a counterintuitive belief that many will inevitably struggle to get their head around. But there’s just no way of knowing for sure until we see for ourselves. In essence, the contradicting truths do not annihilate one another since there exists no logical proof to suggest otherwise.

It is an analogical way of looking at superposition – the action of placing one thing on or above another, especially so that they coincide. A further example of ‘two things at once’ idea includes the notorious particle-wave duality of all matter and its implications in the field of quantum phenomena.

But this particular thought experiment gives us a far more exhaustive insight into the actuality of our circumstances. When it comes to any simulation – computer or otherwise – the thought experiment does hint at a cardinal rule when it comes to perception. It can be described as the Universe’s way of ‘hacking real life’.

Render only that which needs to be observed.

Stuff only really exists for as far as the eye can see.

 

Fake it till you Make it

 

“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.”

-David Bohm, Theoretical Physicist

Back to gaming:

The onset of video game development could only really gain traction through the optimization of limited resources. If you asked somebody in the 1980s if you could render a game like Pistol Whip, a game offering a fully three-dimensional, virtual reality experience, they would say, “No.” if asked to elaborate, they’d protest that attempting such a feat would take all the computing power in the world and more. The brute force computations required would be not possible to implement in real-time.

So how come we’re playing that now?

Possibly the single biggest contributor toward our progression in this area is we’ve since worked out the golden rule of virtual environment design that we considered before – “only render that which is being observed.” Render too much and the computing power would be vastly depleted. But render too little, and it all feels terribly fake. It remains out of the question for one to lose themselves in a game in which they can see the environment being simulated before them. it needs to happen faster than our conscious minds are able to comprehend. Enter, optimization techniques.

Doom, a first-person shooter that became very popular in the 1990s, was the first to successfully administer such techniques. The optimization technique involved render only the light rays and objects that were clearly visible from the POV of the virtual camera. If it was outwith your field of view, it didn’t exist. Until you made it so.

Of course, optimization must also be taken out of the virtual context and applied to real-world complications.

Quantum mechanics, the branch of science dealing with subatomic particles, is one way we can examine the optimization technique at work. There are limits to the resolution with which one can observe the Universe, and if we try to study anything smaller, things just look “fuzzy”. It is akin to the pixelation of a screen when you stand too close.

Of course, as technology improves, so does our ability to look further and further. But, just as Doom manipulated the light rays to save computing power, and just as the cat is only dead when we see it as such.

All in all, it would still be enough detail to fool us. A lie is a fabrication. A good lie is believable. The best lie becomes subjective truth.

Perhaps we’re just living our best lie.

 

The Butterfly Dream

The following paragraph has been taken from the Philosophy Foundation:

Chuang Tzu was a philosopher in ancient China, who, one night went to sleep and dreamed that he was a butterfly. He dreamt that he was flying around from flower to flower and while he was dreaming he felt free, blown about by the breeze hither and thither. He was quite sure that he was a butterfly. But when he awoke he realised that he had just been dreaming and that he was really Chuang Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly. But then Chuang Tzu asked himself the following question:

“Was I Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or am I now really a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu?”

A character in a game is not aware they are in a game. Or even a character. Following from Plato’s allegory of the Cave, if the reality that they’ve acclimatised to is the only reality they’ve ever known, there resides absolutely no reason to question the legitimacy of the world around them as there is literally nothing else to compare with. But in a manner of ‘thinking outside the box’ as it were, even if one were to entertain the possibility that all is not what it seems, something still doesn’t sit quite right:

If this isn’t real then why am I seeing it?

To answer that we must return to the works of Hoffman and his ‘Evolutionary Game Theory’.

 

The Desktop Interface

Picture a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop. Does that mean that the file the icon represents is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer itself? Of course not. That would be silly. But colour, position and shape are the only categories available with which to assert anything, and yet nothing is true of the file itself or anything in the computer. The map is not the territory. You could not truly describe the inner workings of the computer if your entire vantage point was constrained to the desktop.

The map is not the territory.

Nevertheless, shortcuts can be useful. That coloured rectangular icon guides behaviour, veiling a complex reality – a reality you don’t necessarily need to know.

This metaphor is extended to represent evolution. Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. Such discernments have nudged adaptive behaviours in the optimal direction. But part of having the most seamless of user experiences involves hiding the stuff that proves inconsequential to us.

If reality could be fit into the ins and outs of a computer, our experiences would still be confined to the desktop interface. In this sense, 99% of reality, whatever reality might be, would be invisible. Granted, if you mistook a lion for a lampshade, it would be a problem. But equally, if you’d elected to spend all that time figuring out what the little blue icon really meant – the reality it represented – the lion would eat you anyway.

 

It’s not real

Experimental research in the field of cognitive neuroscience has confirmed that our brains default to ‘filling in the gaps’ when some aspect(s) of our observations don’t quite match up with what we expect. It thus becomes highly probable we have all hallucinated reality at some point. Furthermore, as this action takes place in the subconscious depths of our nature, we remain oblivious to the fact that everything is being rendered in real-time to align with the way we have been pre-conditioned to have and hold the world.

However, conventional wisdom reassures you that things are real because you are not the only one to vouch for the fact.

‘Other people see it too’.

Of course, we could all just be hallucinating together. Generating false ideas of our surroundings in perfect sync. But you’ll likely think that’s ludicrous, which is fine. Yes, it’s all very well and good seeing the same thing 7 billion of your peers are seeing.

Safety in numbers, as they say.

Until something happens to test that shared capacity. To cast a dividing line. To make us question the essence of what we actually know.

Something like this.

 

 

The Perfect Program

You and I live and breathe our collective mental model of the world. And we shall continue to do so, despite the fact it took two words to sever that model in half.

Finally, we must once again look to the future.

As we start building more advanced forms of Artificial Intelligence, do we choose to augment them in our image? To look, sound, think, feel, be like us. How would they perceive their world? Would they smile and frown? Love and hate? Laugh and cry? Live and die? But the most important question of them all… Would they believe it? Would all of this become their reality?

Of course, it would. Have you not been paying attention?

They’d be simulating mankind. Simulating… us. If we believe it, so will they.

The perfect computer program.

So I’ll ask you again:

Who are we?

What, is this?

But on that note:

Does it even matter?

 

 

Further Information:

We might live in a computer program, but it may not matter – BBC Earth (article)

The Turing Test – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (article)

The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality (article)

Arjav Poudel
, ,

Clickbait Personalities

 

Conventions

With every day comes another chance to mingle with new characters. Any occasion from job interviews to first dates is helpful in that such exposure effectively preps us for the next social interaction. Those mind-numbingly fatuous lectures on small talk and table manners may have been life’s bane as a child; but for many, habitual courtesy has ultimately proved more help than hindrance.

One learns to address unfamiliar faces through a mixture of exploration and instruction. We can then attempt to deduce how best to prolong the interaction through drawing evidence from a variety of implicit social cues. For example, if you are alone in a crowded room and a total stranger suddenly appears very interested in talking to you, it can cause feelings of discomfort and anxiety to surface. You may not wish to reciprocate their warmth. On the other hand, if you were in a similar situation – except now the stranger accompanied by someone whom you already knew and trusted – you would think much less of it. Close friends are often treated as blood. Asian relations in particular are in a whole different ballpark. You’ll be at your own wedding trying to figure out why the hell most of your ‘uncles’ aren’t sitting at the table reserved for family.

But is this selective extraversion the best way to deal with the unknown? A friend of a friend isn’t always someone you can cosy up to right away. Of course, having someone in common is often a solid indicator of potential friendship. But that’s all it should be – an indicator.

Too good to be true?

You and I could scroll through YouTube for hours, vexed at the surplus of misleading videos that some machine had the audacity of putting on our recommended list. Writers and editors collaborate to compose such headlines – they are designed to punch through the sea of media and catch the wandering eye. Unfortunately, ‘clickbait’ isn’t just restricted to the virtual world. In fact, it’s not even restricted to objects or things. Humans – humans can be clickbait. Clickbait people. You think you know what you’re in for…till you don’t.

Individuals can employ what’s known as ‘impression management skills’— the ability to modulate any unattractive or irksome traits whilst concurrently emphasising qualities deemed conventionally honourable. Everything from the way they dress and hold themselves, to conversational topics and mutual interests can be adjusted to render a better first impression. These chameleons and their arsenal of attractive traits flourish because your whole perception of them is based around what they want you to see. It’s the golden thumbnail they have chosen as a preview into their whole lives. Beware of the golden thumbnail – it’s just the highlights reel.

Strategies based on attracting attention have been chipped away at ever since organisms first stumbled upon basic interpersonal communication. Now whole industries are backing the whole ‘sell the best version of yourself’ spiel. ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’, by Cal Newport is an excellent book detailing how – contrary to Hollywood plot lines – skills often trump passion in the hiring business. Whether you believe this or not, it remains undisputed that there are some great hacks out there when it comes to boosting reputation and credibility. Simply being mindful of such methods can also help us to identify when people happen to be unleashing their inner salesperson on us…

So how do they do it?

Why Lists are Hot

Humans naturally gravitate toward lists because they offer a chance to dismantle intricate concepts and systems of thought. Tim Ferris harnesses the power of lists in his email newsletter, 5 Bullet Friday. Instead of forcing people to actively free up time to read his emails, he has taken the fact his audience are often too busy to absorb long, non-urgent text and capitalised on it by distilling his weekly insights into 5 easy-to-swallow bullet points. The opportunity cost that comes with opening and reading his work has thus been greatly diminished. So many popular articles have taken advantage of lists. Sharp, informative points in quick succession – we love that.

Here’s a further list on the topic of lists:

  • They organize information, which your ‘overworked’ brain appreciates.
  • They typically feature numbers, which stand out when you’re scanning or scrolling through a long stream of headlines.
  • These numbers let you know the general length of the article to help you anticipate how much time and attention it will involve.
  • Lists reduce choice and eliminate a lengthy thought process.*

Put it this way: If you were initially hit with a (short) list of ‘good things’ about a person you’d just met, this would invariably create stronger feelings of admiration toward said person than if those same traits had been watered down into essay form. Praise is most effective in short bursts over longer intervals.

Anticipating the Reward

Another way to dissect the inner workings of clickbait is to understand the effect it has on our already overactive imaginations. The idea that some magic pill is the answer to all of life’s problems is mocked out loud – but that doesn’t mean we don’t all secretly wish such things existed. Can we imagine what that would look like? More importantly, would we enjoy entertaining the thought? Of course we would. Here, fantasy transcends reality.

For so-called ‘intelligent life’, humans are remarkably short-sighted. 99% of the time, the build-up toward something big is what makes everyone hold their breath. The event itself can fall short in comparison. when predisposed to such optimism, the anticipation for reward becomes almost too much to bear. We have to bite. We just have to.

The desire for instant gratification occurs when our ancient evolutionary software starts crackling to life. It overrides the ‘rationality’ interface and reboots the default operating system known as ’emotion’.

The Emotion Model

Emotion has long been categorized using a three-dimensional scale. It’s called the Valence-Arousal-Dominance model, the premise is that each emotion comes with a certain level of arousal. Anger and euphoria both come with high levels – sadness does not. The ‘valence’ of emotions can be either positive or negative.

Dominance simply describes the level of control a person has over their feelings. There is a broad spectrum when it comes to this. Fear can be overwhelming at best and paralyzing at worst. At the other end, there are states such as motivation that remain far easier to engineer and regulate.

Here’s an excerpt from a study carried out by researchers Marco Guerini and Jacopo Staiano on the link between emotion and virality.

There is a clear link between virality and particular configurations of valence, arousal and dominance. “These configurations indicate a clear connection with distinct phenomena underlying persuasive communication

We have all come across headlines designed to manipulate emotion, albeit perhaps in a pretty rudimentary way. Titles like “How to make a million dollars overnight” or “lose 4 stone in two weeks with this killer diet” to name but a few. Also, search engines don’t take long to work out what keeps its users coming back for more. Some of your google searches may one day come back to haunt your browser as a pop-up ad. The data-driven nature of the internet means the more you feed it, the more it feeds you.

But according to the same study, simply inducing an emotional state does not guarantee virality. This is predominantly due to the concept of emotional arousal and it’s correlation with the decision-making process. When the rawest of emotions are aroused, people tend to respond. With clickbait articles, that response is a click. It’s an activity that boasts nearly zero friction and immediate satisfaction. Hence, the addict’s fix. The more attention-grabbing the headline, the more opinions it will generate. The more opinion it generates, the more attention it receives. Controversy is king.

Some of the most ‘viral’ mass media plays on hard-hitting feelings like anger, fear, or excitement. Tabloids and celebrity gossip forums have become masters of this craft. Though I previously argued that social cues can be misleading, it’s correct to assume our knack for discerning between characters – ‘good vs bad eggs’ – usually improves with every interaction. But there’s actually cause to believe that said bad eggs won’t even faze us in the end. Even if you are inclined to believe that a certain publication might be clickbait, another part of you may also believe that there’s a chance – however tiny- that some value can still be derived from checking it out. That part usually wins. The emotional appeal renders the subject matter irresistible, making you click. Thanks to the surge in dopamine, we stay easily hooked to shallow content.

Behavioural psychologists refer to this as intermittent reinforcement – compelling you to act in the hope that it will be worth it in the end. The effect on emotional arousal certainly makes dopamine production a key factor.

So that’s why we are attracted to these things. But what next?

How do we cut through the clickbait?

Cutting through the Clickbait

See, although the little photos and icons next to a publication can be enticing enough to have you tap in the first place, there needs to be something to keep you there. Thumbnails appear before we choose to commit to the video. Some part of our rational being would expect the content to be on par. The trick is to listen to that voice and act accordingly.

Likewise, people who treat their characters like putty can only bask in that esteemed glow for a short while before their true form is exposed. They’ll do anything to immediately set off on the right foot with others so as not to draw attention to their hollow psyche.

When seeing someone in person for the first time – especially if their (positive) reputation precedes them- we don’t even have to be very far into the encounter to realize this scenario we sought out isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Never meet your heroes, they say.

If we allow ourselves to believe all the legends and lap up the hype, we too can be tossed aboard the bandwagon of exaggerated reverence. The more we get to know a person, the more we discover the different sides to them. Someone who, at first may seem calm and reserved, might be prone to bursts of anger from time to time. The confident, charismatic types may be in the trenches with imposter syndrome. If we chose to back every single alluring title or profile picture there was, where would that leave our collective integrity?

The next time you find yourself eyeballing a fresh face, hear them out for 5 minutes before asking yourself: ‘Is this something I’d see through to the end’. If not, then recognize that you’ve been lured here under false pretences, or ‘click baited’. Granted, there may be little you can do about unwanted interaction in a professional setting. Nevertheless, if you have deliberated long enough and repeatedly concluded that this particular meeting is of no value to you – walk away.

Based on this response, you’ll find all future interactions will be somewhat within your control. If in doubt, make for the exit.

Remember, the odds are in your favour. We may be overfishing the sea, but there should be plenty more thumbnails in the cloud.

 

 

Further Reading:

Deep Feelings: A Massive Cross-Lingual Study on the Relation between Emotions and Virality – pdf article

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