Previously, I had written more humanistically on the concept of hate. I do not remember if I tied it to pain - but here are today's thoughts on the subject. Remember, pain is the very definition of negative feedback in a cybernetic system. Hate is simply pain in the first person. Pain is an objective phenomena. Life is defined by pain, and conscious life is defined by hate. If you have no pain, you have no definition of life, and once you become conscious of pain, you embody hate. These are fundamental, nearly mechanistic definitions. Now let us draw out the concept a little farther.
Pain doesn't spring from a vacuum. It is evolved. In order for systems to understand each other, it is important that they understand each other's mechanisms for negative feedback. It is important that they understand each other's pains. However, it is possible for one system to recognise pain in another system, without the first system subjecting itself to the second system's experience of pain. If we return to the vocabulary of empathy, this would be called an un-empathic recognition of pain.
Personally I believe that an un-empathic recognition of pain is optimal for civilisation. However, empathy remains central to the identity of many people. They experience empathy, and without an option to switch it on and off, they adopt empathic reactions as a fundamental component of their conscious identity.
I do not wish for empaths to be more pained than they already are - in fact I encourage them to be more apathetic! However, I do not wish for empathy to persist in the future of civilisations. Nevertheless, I try to cooperate with those who identify with empathy, and to avoid causing them more pain.
Yes, if I could flick a switch and eradicate all empathy from civilisation, I would do it already. However, I remain open to an appreciation of empathy as a sentimental component of our evolutionary history. Though I do not particularly want to see more of it, I am quite aware that it may persist forever.
On we go. Pain is forever, empathy is better left in the past.
2019-07-20 at 10:03 pm
Instructional Design: the underlying thought process
1. You have to, first, be able to define success for the pedagogy: what is the test condition?
2. Then work backwards from there. The next issue is: what the current state of the student's mind?
3. Third: what is the student's current capacity to operate on data?
4. Fourth: now you must iteratively bootstap the insertion of correct data into the student.
Minds are information systems. If you have a good mental model of the student, you can more easily modify the student. Remember that every sense modality comes into play, while designing the student's state of mind. Many teachers forget that the medium which instructions are written on, the diet of the student, the kinesthetic expressions of the instructor, et cetera, all affect the data pool under consideration by the student.
In Journaled Style
For two years from mid-2017, I wore a wristwatch almost every day. It was simply faster to check operation times this way, than by pulling out a phone. Mostly, I wore the watch, a MiBand2, like a tool, face-inside. (This doesn't work if you rest your wrists while typing in desk-jobs - in fact, watch straps do not work at all. I hadn't worn a watch in years, since getting my first cellphone as a gift in 2005. Clearly behind the curve - I am usually a late adopter of unnecessarily cumbersome technology. I still find cellphones cumbersome, would rather they be combined inside laptops, and I hate thumb-typing on glass because it is slow and error prone. I do not use automatic spelling correction.)
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For much of this time, I slept in a rented room, large enough to store boxes of clothing sorted by parts, a dining table which functioned as a study table hardly used and piled high with unsorted paperwork, a king-sized bed belonging to the landlord, a space on the floor to perform calisthenics where a curl-bar was parked with weights. A three-watt lamp was always on. The light helped me stay alert. I had consciously, for this period of life, swapped out my preference for minimising waste, in order to burn money and fuel, use plastic, and eat out, for the sole optimisation of spending more time at work. I also acquired a number of dietary supplements for operational time and cash efficiencies: protein powder, creatine, B12, fish oil. Above the boxes of clothes, I installed a shelf as a convenience for guests to park their things.
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The project was begun in 2015 with three operating partners, and soon these were reduced to one. A staff had to be acquired instead, rapidly cobbled together, largely undisciplined, this too disintegrated within the first year, and has since been completely replaced. From this I gathered that the muppets easily available in our market, did not easily grow into a force of military precision - nowadays, bootcamp for new recruits is a relative hell. I myself overcommitted to leading by example, and insufficiently by command. These days, I simply brief staff that I expect them to fail, and that there will be consequences for failure, and that if they somehow evade failure, there will only be harder challenges to look forward to. I am no longer betting on staff who are on par with the market. Only the strong shall survive this stage of development.
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As an operation we have barely begun. In four years our first prototype is somewhat functional and paying for itself, but research and development beyond that has been dismal. While none of this has fallen outside the bounds of normalcy for this industry, it remains work that while planned for, is nonetheless difficult to perform. On we go. But this past month I have enforced for myself a break of sorts: the watch is temporarily off, and when I go to bed I turn out the light; B12 and creatine dosing have been paused. I would prefer to keep these all on, but unfortunately, it is beyond my capabilities. First I shall seek reparations to my health, and then the switches can be flicked again, and it will be back to busy days.
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Now I rest. Occassionally comforted by the warmth of a body beside me, perhaps itself weeping for the absence of its latest lost boyfriend. Where we go from here, no one can ascertain. On any day, in many ways, the operation may fail. These are simply the records of my existence as I experience it.
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