jameswharris

Reality is Not About Us–Philosophy in a Photograph

Sometimes I get very philosophically excited by a picture, but I find it very hard to put my reaction to it into words. The whole picture is equal to a thousand words kind of thing, but for me, some pictures could generate a hundred thousand words, or even millions.

Here’s a photo I found and sent to several of my friends. It’s a dragonfly covered in dew. Philosophically, I’m fascinated by the idea this reality wasn’t meant just for humans, and reality is experienced by an infinity of minds perceiving it in infinite ways. This is one of the many reasons why I don’t believe in God. God is too small of a concept to encompass all of reality. God is too anthropomorphic, to human self-centered, to be a meaningful hypothesis when you study all of reality. The reason why I embrace science is because science is a better tool for understanding the truth about reality, even though I know that even science is too puny to do the job completely. Science just handles big numbers far better than theology.

Our human senses are so limited when it comes to looking at reality. For example, look at this second photograph of the same image, taken from the photographer’s web site. This is from Martin Amm Photography, and is color corrected differently. The first picture had been color saturated to make it more intense.

Now don’t get the idea that the second photograph is the way the dragonfly really looked at the moment the camera snapped the picture. First off everyone sees things differently, and everyone’s monitor color calibrates differently. But even back in the reality from which the photo was taken the photographer saw the dragonfly differently from what he photographed, and the birds nearby waiting to eat the dragonfly saw it differently too. And the insects on the same branch saw the dragonfly completely different too. There is one huge reality, but all the beings in it see it differently, in an infinite number of ways.

To begin to understand how complex seeing is, and I mean beyond just the tiny window of visual light that humans use, we have to study the electromagnet spectrum. On a recent PBS NOVA, “Earth From Space” they had a scientist report that if the electromagnet spectrum was measured from New York to Los Angeles, then the part the human eye sees with would be the size of a dime.

Size matters. Our view of reality is distorted by our size and the size of our senses. When humans invented the concept of God, our awareness of reality was much smaller, and we pictured God as being the biggest thing we could imagine. All our cherished concepts, God, heaven, hell, love, hate, justice, good, evil are measured by human scale senses. As human minds progressed beyond theology into philosophy and then into science, we saw the reality around us expand further and further. At one time God was the biggest thing we could imagine, and then science gave us the universe, an object whose size is beyond our best imaginations to fathom, but it can be measured.

I use the word “reality” to label everything rather than the word “universe” because scientists are now speculating that our universe might only be one of an infinite number of universes. When I say “reality” I mean the whole she-bang, and not just the big bang. When I say the word “God” isn’t a big enough concept to convey reality I’m not just being an atheist, but I’m making a philosophical statement about numbers, size and reality.

Humans generate ideas constantly, but most of our concepts don’t hold up against reality. Take the concept of heaven. Many people believe when they die they will go somewhere else, somewhere beyond reality. Where is heaven? How big is it? How far do we have to go to get there? How many people are there? How many animals? What about plants and insects? What about intelligent beings from other worlds? Does the dragonfly above deserve everlasting life too? Reality is huge, but how big must heaven be? If everything in this reality gets to live again, how big must heaven be?

By one estimate, over 107 billion people have lived on Earth, and that doesn’t count Neanderthals and earlier forms of hominids. Is heaven and hell crowded now with all those people? What about their favorite pets? What about all the billions to come? Just how big is heaven? Heaven is described in The Book of Revelation and even given with measurements. Depending on we interpret the ancient measure, heaven could a large shopping mall about the size of Australia. Did you know the Bible describes heaven as a building, and living in heaven would be indoors?

See what I mean when I say our concepts about reality are too puny to be realistic. People who study Zen Buddhism are taught to look at reality without using all their bullshit concepts. If they say something stupid they are caned about the head and shoulders. If we had a Zen master walking behind us all day, we’d get whacked in the head constantly. We’re always bullshitting ourselves.

It’s very hard to use words precisely. We have so many bogus words. We have too many words that distort our view of reality because of their anthropomorphism. I find it helpful to stare at photographs and try to forget the words. Or just stare at reality and try not to explain what I’m seeing. But that’s a failure too. You see, we do have a sixth sense, one that the dragonfly doesn’t have, and that’s language. We see with words. Learning to use the correct words, without distorted concepts, is a way to focus our inner sight on reality. We can see reality, in our limited fashion, but we must wash the bullshit off our eyes first.

Does this begin to show you why I got excited by seeing the photograph of the dragonfly? I’ve written about a thousand words now. Tomorrow I could write a different thousand words on meditating on the same photograph.

JWH – 6/27/13

Visual Inspiration

Usually I am excited by words and concepts. I am a lifelong bookworm, so I’m obsessed with black marks on white backgrounds. Living in my head is my constant way of life, thinking wordy thoughts, even to the point of neglecting the colorful details of the external world around me. But during the day I’m often startled by something visual that inspires me. I love looking at the trees outside my window, which sets just above my computer monitor that I am typing at now. I have two windows, the one looking into the internet and the other out onto the world. The world is full of color, but because of my neglect of noticing it, I’m all the more moved by art. And maybe, I prefer seeing reality though art rather than viewing reality directly.

I love catching something visually fascinating as I drive to work each day – the structure of a church steeple, the outline of tree branches against the sky, the way shadows and glare affect my sight. I wish I could turn what I see into art. I wish I was the kind of guy that hiked in nature and captured it artistically. Because I spend so much time indoors, most of my visual stimulation comes from the computer screen or the television.

Every once in a while I see art that blows my mind, and generates a flood of thoughts. The other day I found this computer animation that set my neurons on fire.

Be sure and play this in full screen mode at the highest resolution your computer can handle. I’ve watched it many times now and it just gets better and better. This visuals makes me think of mathematics and musical harmony. This video is like seeing music. This video is like seeing mathematics as if math wasn’t an abstraction of nature. “Oscillate” was created by Daniel Sierra for his MFA Computer Art thesis, and you can see more about this work here.

What I find so inspiring about “Oscillate” is that it’s a visual abstraction that makes me see science. All paintings, no matter how realistic, are an abstraction, in the same way that words and concepts are an abstraction about reality. Art mimics the world. “Oscillate” mimics abstract thoughts. Daniel Sierra imagined seeing animated sine waves much like how classical Greeks imagined mathematics, but instead of putting his thoughts into words, he created a computer animation.

On one hand this video is like abstract art, it doesn’t look like the real world. But I see it as a realistic painting of an actual abstraction in the real world.

JWH – 6/26/13

Why Blog?

This will be my 671st post. I must be approaching or just passing my millionth word written, so I think it’s time to evaluate why I blog. When I started I wrote whatever I felt like and didn’t worry if anyone read what I wrote. Sometimes I’d ask my wife Susan or a friend to read something, but for the most part I considered my blog a diary that I left around opened. I’m interested in a lot of things my friends aren’t, so I used blogging as an outlet for discussing various topics I had no one to talk about with. I guess that might mean I use blogging as kind of therapy. Blogging is also a great way to practice writing, organize thoughts, and learn to research – sort of junior journalism. All of these various purposes are great so long as I don’t think too much about being read.

During the last year I’ve been getting more readers. Mostly by accident. Sometimes I write about a subject that people are researching on Google, like encrypting files for Dropbox, or science fiction books from the 1950s. I have a few friends that actually follow what I write, but you can count them on one hand. I do have 468 followers on WordPress, but I think that’s mostly due other bloggers wanting to attract readership themselves. But it does make me think about what I write. If I hit the publish button and hundreds of people get an email then what I write can be an annoyance or entertainment. That thought has made me delete most of the posts I’ve written lately.

My friend Annie has even been critiquing my posts, with comments like, that one rambled on for far too long, or you didn’t stick to your point, or that topic was boring. I don’t disagree with her assessments either. If I’m going to write something people will be reading then I have a responsibility to make it worth reading. And this presents some problems.

There are three kind of readers on the internet: browsers, subscribers and searchers. Some people get to my pages because writers link to me, others subscribe and get everything I write, but most people read what I’ve written because it’s something they Googled or Binged. Just look at my stats. (You might need to click on the image to make it large enough to read.)

I get the most hits for writing about something specific, like a Toshiba netbook or LG Blu-ray player. But I also write about a lot of topics few people are interested in.

Most of my favorite essays I’ve written get few readers. That’s because they are personal and personal essays don’t get hits.

If I want lots of readers then I’d need to write about something that lots of people want to read about. Well, that doesn’t actually work either. Writing about what everyone else is writing about gets damn few hits. The key to getting search engine hits is to write about something few people have written about, but enough people want to read about.

The key to get subscriber hits is to always write about a specific topic and find fans for that topic.

I don’t do ether. I write about whatever interests me at the moment. That’s good for me but bad for regular readers, and gets few search engine hits.

What I need to do is decide what kind of writer I want to be – at least when it comes to blogging.

JWH – 6/25/13

What Makes You Cry?

I don’t cry, not the boo-hoo kind of weeping, I’m more of a Mr. Spock when it comes to emotions. But I do get misty-eyed from time to time, and as I’ve gotten older, those wet eyed moments come more often. What makes us cry? And obviously, we all cry for different reasons. Yesterday my friend Mike sent me a video, “Bittersweet Melodies” by Feist, that choked me up. If I wore mascara it would have run. It had gotten to Mike too. I forwarded the link to some of my friends and to the online book clubs I’m in. So far I’ve heard from about fifteen women and a handful of men. Men get choked up. Women think its nice, clever, but no tears. I’m waiting for more responses, but so far it’s quite gender specific.

Like I said, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to observe that everyone has different buttons to push to turn on the waterworks. But of my small sample, it seems the Feist video worked with men but not women. So here’s an experiment, watch this video and let me know how you reacted. Do you think it’s just clever, or does it choke you up?

[The original photographs used in the video can be found here and here.]

Before and after pictures of people getting older is a definite emotional button for me, but understanding why, is harder to explain. The wistful Feist song does create an emotional mood, but it’s the photographs that poke me in the heart. Why? Well a couple of anecdotes might help.

When I was a little fella, I remember this time I had to get a shot. I was in a full blown bawling meltdown and the doctor and my mom were trying to get me to cooperate and get punctured. I remember the doctor patiently waiting for me to settle down.

When I had calmed down a bit he said, “You don’t have to cry.”

I don’t think I said anything, but I was thinking, “Huh?”

He again said, “You don’t have to cry.” He had gotten my attention. Then he came closer and whispered, “You can choose not to cry.”

I thought about it for a moment, turned off the faucets in my eyeballs and let him give me the shot. I was amazed I didn’t have to cry. I remember consciously choosing not to cry the next time my mother switched me, and when my dad gave me the belt. I then learned not crying enraged my parents who would switch and belt harder because of my lack of reaction. Not crying had a kind of empowerment. I went with it.

Babies cry, I believe, because they have no other outlets for communicating their needs. I think as adults we cry when we have no other ways to express what we feel. Most of the time we do, so we don’t cry.

The other anecdote from childhood that is useful for this topic is about separation. To kinds of separate. As a kid my family moved around a lot. A whole lot. I’d always make a best friend wherever we moved, but ultimately, that friendship would be torn apart, just something beyond my control. Starting at an early age, looking back and thinking of lost friends always choked me up. I think that’s why most people cling to the idea of heaven – they can’t bear that they will never see some people again. That’s why death tears us up, we can’t communicate our feelings of loss and separation.

When I was very little, I woke up in the middle of the night and went out to the living room where my dad was watching all-night movies. He let me stay up and I watched a film about two kids being separated when one family moved away, then they were reunited during WWII, in the Pacific. I was too young to understand this, I just felt it. That film burned into the core of mind, at the bottom of all my memories. Years later I caught it again, when I was old enough to remember its name, High Barbaree, and the actors, Van Johnson and June Allyson. Eventually I learned that it was based on a book by the same name, written by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the writers of The Mutiny on the Bounty. The story was about the last memories of a dying man, but of course, in the Hollywood version, he’s rescued from death. His dying thoughts were about his childhood and teen years. I think men feel separated from their young selves, in a way that women don’t. I know there are no hard and fast gender generalities, but this one sort of works.

The key to my deepest emotional buttons are encrypted in that movie and book. Events in that story resonate at the core of my being. And that reveals probably my most powerful emotional button, the desire to return to childhood. We can return home, to the physical location where we grew up, but we can’t return to the state of mind when we called it home. I wonder if my lady friends didn’t respond to the Feist video because they don’t have that urge to return to childhood. Women want to be young again in body, but guys want to be young again in mind.

I’ve read there are two kinds of people, those that would pay anything to relive their adolescence, and those who would pay anything to erase the memories of those same years.

“Bittersweet Melodies” is incredibly wistful to me. When I really like a person I want to see photos of when they were kids. I want to know what they did when they were kids, and where they lived. Sometimes I think our true souls are the ones we had at age twelve.

JWH – 6/17/13

All Things SCRABBLE: Word Freak, Word Wars and Scrabylon

I’ve always been a piss-poor SCRABBLE player, so it’s strange that I picked up this book about SCRABBLE tournaments and got totally engrossed in reading about the fanatical world of SCRABBLE players. Words With Friends has changed my attitude towards playing SCRABBLE, a game I’ve always thought as tedious. Words With Friends is easier to play, and always handy. I keep ten games going and make plays throughout the day. When I saw Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players by Stefan Fatsis I bought it thinking it might help my game. Word Freak came out in 2001, but in 2011 it had a 10th anniversary edition, with a 30 page update. Because the Word Freak was so fascinating I went searching for more information about SCRABBLE players, and their tiny world of word geeks. I thought I’d collect what I found for a blog post, since I love reading about micro-subcultures.

Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis (2001)

For some reason Word Freak just grabbed me and I couldn’t put it down. Stefan Fatsis, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and NPR, started out doing a short article on SCRABBLE players, and their tournaments. Then he got hooked on competing himself. Word Freak is a memoir of Fatsis getting to know many of the major SCRABBLE competitors and his efforts to improve his own skills to get higher rankings in the tournaments. SCRABBLE players have a rating system somewhat like chess players. Fatsis started off playing in the 700s and by the end of the book was ranked 1697. He’s currently ranked 1597.

Even if you hate playing SCRABBLE you might find Word Freak worthy of reading. Fatsis takes a complex subject and explains it in very clear details. Word Freak is really about three subjects that Fatsis weaves together. At one level the book is about the history of a game and how the tournaments work. At the next level its about lexicology and studying words. Finally, the story is about obsessive people, and how far they will go to become great at playing a game, and how that changes their lives.

Reading the book does require some patience – it’s somewhat technical when it comes to words and wordplay.

Word Wars – Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit (2004)

After reading Word Freak I checked Netflix and found Word Wars, available on disc and streaming. The documentary film by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo credited Stefan Fatsis and Word Freak as their inspiration. The film followed four players Joe Edley, Matt Graham, Marlon Hill and Joel Sherman for nine months as they prepared for the 2002 National Scrabble Championship. All four were profiled extensively in Word Freak, so it made me happy to meet them on film.

Scrabylon (2003)

Finally, I got to see Scrabylon, a film by Scott Petersen, which was made before Word Wars, but is pretty much about the same cast of characters. By now I was beginning to burn out some on SCRABBLE documentaries, but I still want more. I can’t help but wonder how things are ten years later? Are the old players being pushed out by bright new word freaks? In the book and films, all the players talked about SCRABBLE tournaments becoming more successful, to offer bigger prizes and get more public attention. I’m not sure that’s happened. Quite often I have seen short pieces in the news about SCRABBLE championships, but they don’t reflect the hoped for growth.

After reading the book and seeing these films I started thinking about my own skills. In Words With Friends I’m averaging about 22 points per words, but there are players that average over 200 points per word. I assume they are cheating, but maybe not. I win a lot of Words With Friends games, but I don’t think I’m a particularly good player. Reading Word Freak made me want to improve at Words With Friends, but maybe also play SCRABBLE itself, live with friends.

SCRABBLE v. Words With Friends

Many people think they are playing SCRABBLE when they are playing Words With Friends, but it’s really two very different games. Which is why Words With Friends isn’t being sued out of existence. The boards are different, the tile values are different, the number of tiles are different, but most importantly, you have to know how to spell to play SCRABBLE, whereas you can endlessly guess in Words With Friends. In SCRABBLE you can intentionally play a phony word to bluff your opponent. But if she challenges you and the agreed upon dictionary supports her, you lose your turn. SCRABBLE is all about memorizing real words. Words With Friends is all about finding real words that’s acceptable to the game. You can try as many as you want. With SCRABBLE you only get one try.

Words With Friends is also notorious for people cheating. Playing real SCRABBLE, with real people, with a real board, not in cyberspace, but real space, means you’re on your own to come up with words out of you’re own little brain. When I get together with someone to play SCRABBLE my average word values go way down, and it feels like I’m straining my brain to play.

Skill Versus Luck

Chess is a game that is all skill. SCRABBLE is a game that involves a huge amount of luck with a lot of skill. SCRABBLE appeals to more people because it is accessible, and easier to play than chess. Words With Friends is even easier and more accessible than SCRABBLE, which explains its huge success.

Tournament SCRABBLE players often whine about the poor tile combinations they pulled from the bag, but the real experts can use their tremendous word knowledge to make a bad rack of letters into a high scoring word. That’s why they memorize tens of thousands of obscure words. Knowing words and how they can be played in novel combinations in a board arrangement can thwart an opponent’s “lucky” streak of drawing good letters.

SCRABBLE Dictionaries

Professional SCRABBLE tournaments use various standard dictionaries. Players spend time every day learning the words in those dictionaries – often without learning their meanings. Because English is a world-wide language, SCRABBLE is even played by people whose first language is not English, deciding on an official dictionary is difficult. Basically it breaks down into three groups of English words. Tournaments in the U.S., Canada and Thailand use the Official Tournament and Club Word List (TWL) (178,691 words). For international play, SCRABBLE players use SOWPODS, which combines American and British words (267,751 words). Players using SOWPODS have more words they can play, but it also means potentially memorizing almost a hundred thousand more words. This also makes it difficult for world players to compete in America, because they need to know which words not to use, or for Americans to compete internationally, which means they need know all the additional words that can be used. Plus players need to know when to challenge a phony.

For non-professional, home players of SCRABBLE, Hasbro recommends The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD), now in the 4th edition. The OSPD doesn’t have “offensive” words in it, which many professional and amateur players like to reply on. Strangely, the internal dictionary for Words With Friends allows some offensive words and not others.

Because on July 1, 2013, Hasbro, the American maker of SCRABBLE, is dissolving the National Scrabble Association (NSA), which it has hosted for 25 years, things might change. Since 2009, North American tournament SCRABBLE is organized by the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA). Here is NASPA’s most recent statement on word lists.

Word Freak has an extensive discussion and history of SCRABBLE players struggling to come up with an official dictionary. It’s a fascinating problem. Words are constantly added to the language. Words also go out of favor, but should they be removed from the official dictionaries? Players want to use them. As SOWPODS grows, the number of playable words grows, which makes it harder and easier for players. It’s much easier to build elaborate tile combinations if they get to use all words, but at some point many of the words look like gibber-jabber.

Now, I’m not a tournament player, so my opinions don’t count. But while reading Word Freak I was appalled by herculean efforts some professional players go to memorize words. If all the top players have to become Rain Man to compete then it makes the idea of tournament play far less appealing. It also bothers me that the players aren’t required to know the definitions of the words they play.

Learning Words

Professional SCRABBLE players spend hours a day learning words, usually from word lists. 2-letter, 3-letter, 4-letter lists, and so on. Or from lists of special words, like all the Q Words, or Q Words Without U. Most non-tournament SCRABBLE players eventually get around to memorizing short lists, but few people have the stomach for the long lists. That’s what separates the living room players from the rated players.

Tournament players often print out long lists of words, thousands and thousands of them, and cut them into flashcards, so they can study them a hundred at a time. I would never do this. I’m surprised by how much memorization Stefan Fatsis had to pursue to write his book and become a expert player. I think it’s the willingness to study the long lists that separate merely great players from wannabe tournament champions.

Anagramming

Another astonishing feature of word power shown by professional SCRABBLE players is their ability to anagram verbally. You know how parents often spell out words in front of young children so kids won’t know what the grownups are talking about, well, I’m 61 and if people verbally spell out words I don’t understand them. So it blows me away that these SCRABBLE players can spell out 8, 9, 10, 11 or more letters and they can anagram them in their heads. Fatsis reported that the tournament players often sat around playing anagrams after the tournament ended each night. But Fatsis was also told that learning to anagram was a key tool to learning to compete in SCRABBLE competitions and raising his competitive rating.

Strategy and Bingos

Another big difference between living room players and tournament SCRABBLE players is their ability to plan ahead, and especially, plan their end games. Competition level plays constantly seek to get Bingos – playing all seven letters from their rack at once. Great players track the titles played and know which letters might be in the bag or on their opponents rack, and they often play short words one round in hopes of pulling the letters to make a bingo in the next round.

Average Words With Friends players love getting the Q and J because of their 10 point values, but competitive SCRABBLE players often consider these letters a burden. They’d rather get letters, with lesser values, that help them make bingos. They are always collecting prefixes and suffixes thinking about 7 letter words + 1, those words that can be made from 7 letters on the rack and hooked to one letter on the board. They especially love making 8, 9, and 10 letter words by playing 7 titles across three lines of words.

You can follow the game where Mark Landsberg achieved the highest score ever to see how such strategy works.

Visit cross-tables.com to follow games, tournaments, strategy and tools.

If you really want to get caught up in SCRABBLE competition you can read The Last Word newsletter or join SCRABBLE Club or Internet Scrabble Club.

Word Freak chronicled Fatsis meeting many champion players and their own personal strategies they used to win. Most of their strategies involved game play or word study, but sometimes it involved brain drugs, meditation, positive thinking, attitudes towards winning, and even methods to achieve Zen-like flow.

Postgame Analysis, Quackle and Zyzzyva

Fatsis spends a lot of time analyzing games in Word Freak, and he reports that most competitive players write down all their racks for every game they play and then analyze them later for possible better plays. Often at the tournaments, players will gather together to tell each other better possible words to each play. Many players use computer software to analyze their games. Two such programs are Quackle and Zyzzyva. There are many online programs and dictionaries to help players find more word combinations from any given set of letters. Many Words With Friends players use these tools to cheat. but they can also be used to practice

Changing My Game

I still enjoy Words With Friends, but I think I need to switch to SCRABBLE. I know I will never push my mind to be a SCRABBLE champion, but I do think I should push it to memorize words. I have started paying more attention to word spellings as I read books. Like I said earlier, I was disappointed that SCRABBLE masters don’t focus on word definitions. Stefan Fatsis spent a lot of time in his book dealing with word play and it made me want to study words more, maybe even read some books on lexicology. I think I’ll start with Word Buff.

I won’t be making lists of words to memorize, but I might start studying words in general, and their definitions. Reading Word Freak and watching these documentaries made me aware of my wimpy vocabulary. My wife Susan has always loved anagrams, crossword puzzles, and other word puzzle games, and she’s always been much better than me at SCRABBLE and Word With Friends.

JWH – 6/16/13 (Happy Birthday Susie)