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Invention vs. discovery

Mathematics has been a big part of my life since middle school, when, out of curiosity and with encouragement of my teacher, I became interested in solving mathematical puzzles and participating in inter-school competitions. Subsequently, it led me to studying applied math in the university and later doing research and teaching fluid mechanics as an engineering professor. Ironically, ever since research became my career, I somehow stopped being particularly curious about the mathematics itself, and started treating it as tool for doing my work.

About a year ago, I read book called “Is God a mathematician?“ by Mario Livio. It prompted me to think about math from less utilitarian and more philosophical perspective. A curious feature of math is that it can be considered both as a human creation (e.g., a language that is useful for performing calculations and expressing laws of physics) and as something existing on it’s own and what humans only discover (e.g., like the natural laws themselves). It seems that the latter aspect is definitely present, despite Albert Einstein’s belief that math is, essentially, a set of human-made tools. In 1960, Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate physicist, even wrote a paper in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics entitled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” which discussed precisely that – how it is possible that exercises in “pure” mathematics prompt post-factum discoveries of natural phenomena.

As a personal takeaway from reading Livio’s book, I feel a bit better about spending time thinking about mathematics per se without worrying whether it is particularly relevant for my field of research or whether a particular research question has already been answered. It is also kind of amusing to learn that even intellectual giants like Richard Feinmann went through a variation of this thinking process with surprising results, e.g. when he consciously decided to apply himself to re-tracing the steps of a well-known solution describing spinning plates that eventually lead to a Nobel-prize-level breakthrough.

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Self-determination theory in action

I’ve just finished listening to a good audiobook called “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal and Julie Li. Since I’ve started keeping track of what I read/listen to in a series of annual blog posts, I developed a personal criterion for the quality of the book based on whether it makes me want to read more on some of the topics it covers. in that sense, “Indistractible” is good because it pointed me towards several rabbit holes to explore. One of them is the self-determination theory (SDT) in psychology. It argues that for achieving optimal performance, in addition to (indeed, more than) the carrot-and-stick of external motivation, people need emotional nourishment in the form of autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Autonomy refers to agency – the ability to make independent decisions and take responsibility for their consequences.

Competence is the opportunity to become better at the activity.

Relatedness is the social aspect of the activity – it is the sense of appreciation of your achievement by other people.

My daughter told a story the other day that perfectly illustrated the SDT concept. She entered middle school this year, and they were having a get-together with other students during a recess, where everyone shared a talent they had. My daughter showed a combo of hip-hop moves that she’d been working on in a dance class outside of school. She was delighted that it was met with enthusiasm, particularly by older students. Clearly, she was quite happy about her hip-hop endeavours and was keen to keep exploring it further – thinking about getting together with other interested kids to learn new break-dance moves. It was just what SDT requited: she had autonomy (hip-hop was her activity of choice), competence (several years of practice) and relatedness (the other kids like this stuff and want to learn it).

I thought that perhaps by being conscious about the daily emotional diet, where autonomy, competence and relatedness of the mundane activities play a role of macro-nutrients, we could deliberately manufacture positive experiences like that, rather that occasionally stumbling upon them.

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What I learn while learning to play violin

When my daughter started taking violin lessons, I joined her in this adventure without having any prior music experience until that point. I still enjoy keeping her company, but more than my miserable advances in playing skills I enjoy learning about the learning process itself and the techniques for developing complex skills that have been distilled in the musical field over the centuries. I should mention that the mathematical aspects of music and the physics of sound generation are always fascinating to me, since they are very close to to what I do professionally as a professor in fluid mechanics.

Once of the things about complex task performance that caught my attention recently was a profound comment made by out teacher, Simon, about multitasking. “A popular view these days is that multitasking is not possible,” he said, “but in fact, I am doing it right now: I am breathing, standing, holding my bow in one hand and my violin in the other, looking at the music score in front of me and talking to you.” “The trick is,” he continued, “to turn all these separate things into one action and mentally treat them as such.”

I found this mental model quite helpful in my music practice. There is one exercise in particular, where you set a metronome at a given tempo and play a sequence of 4 notes, 1 note per beat, in a single draw of the bow. Then, you double the tempo of your playing, keeping the metronome and the bow speed constant – that is, you would play 2 notes per beat, and 2 sequences of the 4 notes per length of the bow. After that, you quadruple the tempo: 4 notes per beat, 4 note sequences per bow. And so on (I couldn’t get past the third step yet on even the easiest of the note sequences). The trick that seems to be working for me for this exercise is to treat the group of notes that are played on the same beat of the metronome as one motion of the fingers of my left hand. So I would focus on individual notes (and fingers that play them) in the first pass, on a pair of notes on the second, and on a group of four notes (as a single motion of the fingers) on the third.

This apparent work-around for the “there is no such thing as multitasking” idea also came up in the book I am listening to (“Indistractable” by Nir Eyal and Julie Li). This phenomenon is well-known in psychology, and it’s called multi-modal stimulation and perception. It means that two or more of our sensory systems – vision, hearing, proprioception (perception of the body position), smell and taste – can process information simultaneously. There is even evidence that human performance of certain tasks can be enhanced if multi-modal stimulation is present. For what it’s worth, I certainly like working while listening to music or even while sitting in a relatively-noisy environment such as a cafe.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that multitasking in a conventional sense of the word is possible (otherwise, as Nir Eyal points out, we could listen to two different podcasts at the same time – one in each ear). But if it’s possible to combine many complex activities into a single one, such as “teaching a violin lesson”, perhaps by applying this mindset wider we can manage something like “going through a day” or even “living a happy life” without being pulled in a million directions by conflicting goals and obligations. Perhaps, there is no conflict, and this goals and obligations are all part of one thing. And, with some practice, we can do one thing at a time.

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Travel photos

This summer, we took or first post-COVID long-distance trip. I had a conference in France, and my wife and daughter joined me. Afterwards, we followed up the conference with a few days of family vacation in Antibes. It was a great trip overall, and it reminded us how much we missed travelling. Looking back at my photos, though, I realize that it has always been a bit of challenge for me to enjoy the experience of the foreign locale at the moment. Interestingly, my photography interest is both the reason and the cure for this difficulty.

This disconnect with reality is described by Anthony De Mello in his book “Awareness” (the book has been largely a disappointment, but that is a different topic). He says that most people plan their vacations, book flights an, but when they get there, they immediately start worrying about their flight back home. So they are not fully present to experience their travel destination. They take pictures, but they miss the smells, the tastes, the sense of the place. So people bring back pictures of the places they didn’t actually see.

On the other hand, taking photos gives me focus by providing motivation for visiting specific sites, waiting for a certain time, when the sun hits the subject with the golden light. These are the moments that I tend to remember afterwards. During this trip, for example, we were having dinner at a street-side restaurant just steps from the Eiffel Tower, and I kept popping out from the table to peek across the corner to see if the setting sun had hit the tower.

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Samurai Tales book

While browsing through my bookshelf, I stumbled on a book called “Samurai Tales” by Romulus Hillsborough. I bought this book at an airport, during one of my first trips to Japan. I read it then, during the flight, and found it to be a nice match for my interest in Japanese history and all things related to kendo, while unmistakably written for a by a foreigner. Incidentally, an advice for foreigners that I came across early on in my becoming fascinated with Japan and found to be absolutely essential for adjusting to living there – while being eager to adapt to the Japanese culture, do not try to “become Japanese”. First, this attempt would be doomed to failure by its objective impossibility, and second, being authentic (yet considerate to others) is perhaps the most valuable trait that allows one to bridge the cultural gap.

This time, what caught my attention was the photo on the cover of the “Samurai Sketches” book. It’s the last portrait of Sakamoto Ryoma taken in 1885, just days before his assassination. The remarkable feature is how relaxed he looks. I realize of course that this is probably due to the slow shutter speed used in those times. Yet, the contrast between the national-scale turmoil of the Meiji Restoration period and the personal-scale tranquility that the key players of that drama were able to project, even if temporarily, is amazing. Somehow, when I initially read this book, I didn’t pay much attention to this aspect, being mostly engrossed in the excitement of the quintessential samurai saga of loyalty, individual bravery and martial arts. This time, I am looking forward to re-reading it from a different perspective.

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Post-mortem game analysis

“Don’t be satisfied with just being able to pinpoint the exact mistakes. Always try to understand the underlying causes of your defeat.”

Martin Weteschink, “Chess Tactics from Scratch”

This quote is an example of one of the aspects of chess that is easier said than done. It is not the first time I come across this advice for making the most of your own game analysis. Finding the exact moment when your position turned into a disadvantage is relatively easy nowadays with the help of a computer engine. Even built-in tools of chess.com and other similar sites are capable of doing this. However, recognizing the cause for making the mistake is far from easy. Ultimately, it requires well-developed sensitivity to your personal triggers and psychological patterns, and at the very least one needs to have sufficient mental energy at the moment to even be willing to dig that deep into a game that has already been played.

The good thing is that this analytical ability seems to be a trainable skill, and therefore can improve with practice.

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My 2021 reading list

Last year, I enjoyed writing about the books I read in 2020 and collecting my notes and takeaways. I decided to do it again just after the New Year, but as anything that doesn’t have a deadline, completing the list took quite a bit of time. I decided not to make separate posts on children’s books, fiction and non-fiction books, as I did last time, but I still organize the list below into these categories. I do this mainly because I consume these genres differently.

Note: The links below are affiliate links, so if you follow them to Amazon and buy something, I might get paid some money .

Children’s books:
Reading children’s books is our family time. We keep going a tradition of reading aloud to our daughter before bedtime, even though she is reading quite a bit on her own during the day as she grows older and develops her own interests. We pick a book, in paper format, that none of us has read before, so that discovering the story and the reading process itself becomes a shared experience.

1. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” by J.K. Rowling
2. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K. Rowling
3. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling

We started reading this “Order of the Phoenix” last summer, during a trip to Tofino. Climbing into a bed with the thick tome after our daily surfing sessions quickly became a ritual. My wife and I would take turns reading aloud. When it was my turn to listen, I enjoyed allowing myself not to multitask and just followed the storyline. After coming back from vacation, we carried on reading after dinner, almost every day. This was a piece of the elusive “sabbatical mindset” that we were able to convert to a lasting lifestyle element. I think the Harry Potter series is nothing short of a masterpiece, but the most significant takeaway for me is about the reading experience. With these books, I re-discovered the joy of reading for its own sake, without directly aiming to learn something practical or to be productive in some way.

Fiction:
Most of these are e-books, which I read on a tablet or a phone, in tiny chunks of time throughout a typical day, plus one slightly longer chunk of time in the evening, as a wind-down routine.

4. “Fall or, Dodge in Hell” by Neal Stephenson.
I’ve been keen to follow the canon of Stephenson’s novels featuring Dodge or his relatives ever since being exposed to it through his “Cryptonomicon”. The “Fall” went very well with the children’s books by Rick Riordan popularizing Greek mythology, which my daughter was eagerly absorbing during the previous year. It is an intriguing thought exercise to ponder what might produce those kinds of myths in modern times or in the not-very-distant future.

5. “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson.
This is not the most recent piece of sci-if, so it’s eerie how far in advance Stephenson could spot things like Metaverse, cryptocurrencies (I was introduced to the concept in his “Cryptonomicon” several years ago) and AI. In “Snow Crash”, the description of the thought process of a “rat thing”, a cyborg security doggie based on a bullterrier, was particularly moving. I began to view my own dog, Bruno, differently after reading it. It would have been a worthwhile book to read just for that.

6. “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez.
I liked the “Snow Crash”, but wanted to read something more up-to-date, so I searched on Reddit for a book that would be similar to Stephenson’s “REAMDE”, which I read earlier and really enjoyed. “Daemon” came highly recommended, and it apparently had a cult following in tech circles. It definitely did not disappoint in terms of the fast pace and a good insight into the AI capabilities and limitations. I think this book came up as similar to “REAMDE” because both feature the interaction between the physical world and a multiplayer game simulation. But I also appreciate both of the books for their international crime drama/detective story flavour.

7. “FreedomTM” by Daniel Suarez.
Strictly speaking, I finished reading this book in 2022, but this is a direct sequel to the “Daemon”, which I liked so much that I simply had to get it right away. Besides, it’s taken me so long to compile this reading list that the exact timeline of when I read what starts to be less relevant. “FreedomTM” probably cannot stand on its own, without reading the “Daemon” first. It is still very good, although not as overwhelmingly excellent as the “Daemon”. The grand ideas of the societal pivot towards integration with the distributed algorithm are introduced a bit heavy-handedly, in my opinion. I also found the concept of the protagonists of the “Daemon” suddenly embracing their former deadly foe a bit hard to digest initially. Upon consideration, though, I agree with Suarez that such course of events is possible and even plausible, and that it’s definitely worth exploring. It’s just difficult to handle the story on the scale of the humankind with the same elegance as it was dome on the scale of individuals in the “Daemon”. Incidentally, it appears that these are the only two books written by the author, and it is remarkable that the debut has been such a hit, considering his wide-ranging accomplishments outside of literature.

Non-fiction:
I mostly consume (hesitate to say “read”) books in this category in an audio format. I listen to them while walking the dog or driving to pick up my daughter from school. I do this because these are the books that I wouldn’t have had time to read otherwise. The exception are chess books. I read those in an electronic format on my iPad, with a chess app opened in a second window, so that I can follow the examples and variations by moving the pieces. This is more efficient than using a physical chessboard, but is still a bit cumbersome. In the future, I’d like to try the Forward Chess app, where the chessboard functionality is integrated with an e-reader. Ben Johnson of the Perpetual Chess podcast (another thing I regularly listen to on my dog walks) often mentions it as a very convenient reading mode.

8. “Atomic Habits” by James Clear (audio).
In a sea of self-help productivity books, this one is a fundamentally great one. It is one of the only two books that I re-read (rather, re-listened). There are many practical suggestions in the book, but the one I found particularly useful as a takeaway is the importance of temporal and spatial consistency in habit formation. It is easier to form new positive habits (or drop old bad ones) in a new place. It is also easier to exercise, journal, etc. at the same time of the day.

9. “Beginners” by Tom Vanderbilt (audio).
I heard about this book on the Perpetual Chess podcast. The author describes his experiences in starting a series of completely new and unrated hobbies. What resonated with me is that he began some of them to accompany his young daughter, which I’ve also been doing, in my case, with violin-playing. A take-home point for me was that it is not alway necessary to justify what you do in terms of some material benefit, as long as the activity itself is fulfilling.
“A gulf was opening. Unless you were a professional, you were a mere dilettante or an “amateur.” And what did this loaded word originally signify? “To love,” derived from the French aimer. With the increasing specialization of knowledge and professionalization of everyday life, suddenly being delighted by something, or loving something, was seen as vaguely disreputable.”
Vanderbilt also quotes a surfer, who speaks about adult beginners – something like the iconic scene from “Point Break”, where Keanu Reeves’ character is condescendingly told that it is late to start surfing at his age. He said that the experience of adult beginners in surfing depends on their goals. If they are aiming at excellence – it’s a path of frustration and injuries. But it is quite possible to enjoy surfing over many years if one doesn’t strive to be one of the best surfers out there.

10. “Simple Chess” by Michael Stean.
This is one of the best practical chess book I’ve read so far (disclaimer: I haven’t read that many yet). The emphasis is on positional concepts with the implications that brilliant combinations naturally emerge from superior positions, to paraphrase Fischer.

11. “The Moves that Matter” by Jonathan Rowson (audio).
This is more of an autobiography than a chess book. Rowson is a philosopher, in addition to being a Grandmaster, and his writing is funny and insightful. This particular book gives a unique perspective on balancing (or attempting to balance) professional chess aspirations with life outside the sport. Chess losses are quite devastating psychologically, regardless of one’s level. It is necessary to digest them from a positive perspective of learning in order to be able to maintain motivation and learn. At he same time, the purely competitive aspect is always there as well. Rowson recalls an episode when he lost a match at a tournament and half-jokingly said to a fellow Grandmaster that “it was a good lesson,” to which the other person said: “It’s time to stop learning and to teach them a lesson.” It’s brutal, and adopting this ruthless mentality apparently didn’t work in the long run for the author, in terms of spurring him to continue full-tilt with the pro chess career. It seems that many top players are quite unhappy on the personal level.

12. “Do the work” by Steven Pressfield (audio)
Pressfield’s “The War of Art” is a highly-regraded and popular take on procrastination in creative endeavours – what he refers to as “resistance”. I read it before and quite liked it. So I downloaded this book looking forward to more insight, but it was largely disappointing. This was a very short listen – seems like a recap of a blog article. So my take-home message from this particular book is to avoid short blurbs like this in the future. I am all for publishing half-baked ideas in order to develop them and let them mature, but a book is a wrong medium for this, in my opinion.

13. “Beyond Order” by Jordan B. Peterson (audio)
I liked Peterson’s controversial-to-the-point-of-almost-being-obnoxious “12 Rules for Life”, where he made a case for combatting chaos and establishing order in various aspects of one’s life. So I was intrigued of how he would present the alternative, if not opposite, view and argue for the benefits of a wide view on life. Here is an idea from the book: It’s good to accept your position as a beginner (when you are a beginner in a certain field). With it comes a certain lack of responsibility, which is liberating. But today’s beginner is tomorrow’s master, so we should treat beginners with respect, even if these beginners are ourselves. Also, true communication occurs only among peers, so it is good to be in the middle of a hierarchy in whatever field you happen to be operating.

14. “Logical Chess: Move by Move” by Irving Chernev.
This has been my favourite book. It’s a collection of classic games, where rationale of literally every move on both sides of the board is explained. I’d like to think that it helped me shape the general direction of my own thinking during various phases of the game. I also heard of a more modern “move-by-move” book by Nigel Short, which I am definitely going to look up.

15. “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown (audio)
I often pick up ideas for books to read from the podcasts I listen to. This book is a good example. I liked McKeown’s interview on the Tim Ferris Show and subsequently went to listen to his own podcast. The funny thing is that beyond the obvious (perhaps, in retrospect) idea that simplifying your life is good for you, it’s difficult for me to remember a particularly useful bit or tactic I learned from it. Yet, McKeown’s podcast is the one I still return to from time to time. I have the impression that his personal values are fairly consistent with what he writes.

16. “Effortless” by Greg McKeown (audio)
Evidently, I liked “Essentialism” enough to pick the next book by the same author immediately after I finished it. Here, McKeown addresses a common conundrum where even after defining the “essential” things in life one is faced with impossibly too many of them to tackle. Again, if this book provided an answer as to what to do in that situation, I don’t recall what it was. That probably should tell me something about this line of books in particular and perhaps this genre of self-help literature in general (that it is quite useless). Nevertheless, I remember that I really did enjoy listening to them.

17. “Stillness is the Key” by Ryan Holiday (audio)
I like listening to Holiday’s interviews because of his public speaking skills. I find his opinions a bit strong, but he is consistent, just like McKeown above. This book is from a series where he popularizes the stoic philosophy.

18. “Lives of the Stoics” by Ryan Holiday (audio)
I knew that it was unlikely that I would ever find time to read a scholarly work on stoics, so Holiday’s pop culture take on the most famous biographies was just the right mix of new material and entertainment.

19. “Bird by bird” by Anne Lamott (audio)
A beautiful case for doing the work on large projects in small chunks. The book’s title refers to a case where the author’s brother was given advice to tackle a large essay on local birds in small chunks, i.e. bird by bird, instead of being paralyzed by the magnitude of the whole project.

20. “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp (audio)
Clearly, fifteen is too many commitments for me to hold in my head, but the most tactically-useful point I remember is to periodically check throughout the day whether I am “above or below the line” in terms of my attitude towards things that are currently on my plate or the situation I am in.

21. “Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (audio)
Technically, I listened to this book before, but I re-listened to it again in 2021, and this fact tells something by itself. I found it quite positive and comforting somehow. Maybe, it’s a false comfort of believing that you can be in control of your time. Nevertheless, I like the idea of defining a single “highlight” for each day and treating all other things that you manage or have to do as a bonus. The single highlight give you something to look forward to in the short term, and it also lets you declare a victory after it’s accomplished. Perhaps more important than the tactical suggestions in this book was the list of recommended books at the end of it, which defined the rest of my reading for the yer. Jake and John commented on each of their favourite books in a couple of sentences, distilling their main points (kind of what I am attempting here).

22. “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin (audio)
This was the first book I picked up from Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky’s list in “Make time”. This is a “stunt non-fiction” book, where the author undertakes to do something for year and reports on her experience. I’ve listened to Gretchen’s podcast before, and what I find inspiring in it, as well as in this book, is the unapologetic fun she is apparently having through exploring various life hacks. The concept that you don’t have to be an expert in a field to be explore it is liberating. Apparently, all that’s required for reaping most of the benefits is curiosity and enjoying the process of exploration itself.

23. “How to Have a Good Day” by Caroline Webb (audio)
This book to me was a more systematic follow-up to Gretchen Rubin’s somewhat haphazard (but extremely well-presented and uplifting) account of various psychological techniques. This book is certainly more dry than “The Happiness Project”, but what it lacks in fluidity, it compensates in scientific foundation and depth of explanation of the underlying principles. It is still very readable, though, and I certainly enjoyed it. The takeaway that I remember most readily is that your expectations of an event shape how it will actually unfold and what affect it will have, at least from your subjective standpoint. An example Caroline gives is that if you expect a business meeting to be boring and unproductive, you will find evidences supporting this expectation both during the meeting and in retrospect. The same exact meeting could be viewed in a different light by someone, whose expectations of it were positive to begin with.

24. “The Power of Moments” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (audio)
I believe, the main idea here is that our lives are disproportionally influenced by relatively short, but significant, events. These formative moments (e.g. weddings, job interviews, etc.) are worth planning for. Moreover, it is worth planning small moments that would have a positive effects into each day. I really like this suggestion and think that it has lot of potential for improving the quality of life. As with everything, though, consistency and disciplines are the key. In other words, it is easier said than done.

25. “Mindset” by Carol S. Dweck (audio)
Fixed mindset vs. Growth mindset – as parents, my wife and I have been exposed to these concepts pretty much continuously since our daughter entered school. Teachers here in Canada, as well as in Italy, where we were on sabbatical when our daughter was in Kindergarten, made references to them all the time. Carol Dweck is the one who coined the fixed/growth mindset terminology and popularized it through this book. In my opinion, it is quite excellent and actually goes deeper than treating your failures as stepping stones to future success. For me personally, reminding myself of the growth mindset principles allows me to increase complexity of the things I do (and thus to increase the proportion of time spent in a flow state, following Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s principles) without being crushed by the inherent frustrations of learning chess, violin, painting and academic research.

26. “A Guide to the Good Life” by William B. Irvine (audio)
This is another modern take on stoicism. The main idea is that attaining tranquility is a worthy life goal, and that methodically identifying sources of distress in our life and dealing with them is a feasible strategy both for the long and short time horizons. This read is different from Ryan Holiday’s take on the subject, and I am glad I came across it. There are certainly many things that resonate with my own perspective.

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Curiouser and curiouser!

I’ve been listening to an audiobook called “Conscious” by Annaka Harris, and this is definitely the most thought-provoking read I’ve had in a while. She discusses many concepts that are completely new to me, and yet I realize that I’ve been bumping into them many times before in various areas of my work and personal interests.

One of them is panpsychism (from Greek ‘pan’ – ‘all’ and ‘psyche’ – ‘soul’). This is a philosophical theory that postulates that consciousness is a fundamental property, and that everything in the universe possesses it. This idea has a distinctly religious undertone, but upon closer examination, it turns out that it is, in fact, one of the simplest and therefore plausible solutions to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness”. The problem is explaining how consciousness comes into existence in a collection of matter that didn’t have consciousness initially. This problem is called “hard” to distinguish it form the “easy” problems of explaining the mechanisms of existing conscious processes and studying how the brains of animals work, etc.

Coming to terms with the panpsychism becomes less intellectually challenging if one starts thinking about the defining features of a conscious, or even alive, system. Once it becomes apparent that properties like ability to react to or communicate with an environment are not sufficiently good criteria for drawing the line between natural systems that have consciousness and those that do not, it becomes apparent that it is indeed logical to grant the possibility of consciousness (although not human-like consciousness) to systems like plants, single-cell organisms and, taken to the extreme, subatomic particles. I really liked how Annaka Harris gradually by firmly walks the readers through this reasoning process, without dumbing it down and without over-protecting it from the inherent logical challenges. Once you consider that plants and animals are not as different as we intuitively consider them to be in terms of their ability to remember (i.e. collect, store and recall information) and react to the environment, these and other properties that can be considered indicators of consciousness (even if each one of them does not qualify to be the defining property) can be propagated all the way down to the subatomic levels of matter. The consciousness is a matter of matter, as one playful quote in the book states.

This rabbit hole goes incredibly deep. Donald Hoffmann, for example, argues that panpsychism actually takes realism too seriously by granting the subatomic particles, and indeed the spacetime reality, too much of a fundamental role in the structure of the universe. To continue borrowing expressions from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, things become curiouser and curiouser!

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Live audience

Last week, I had a chance to photograph the first live-audience performance of my daughter’s dance company in more than two years. In my role as a photographer, I’ve always been lucky to have a behind-the-curtains insight into how the incredible performance pieces that other parents can see only at the year-end shows take shape. The amount of work that the dancers and the teachers put into it is simply astonishing. When I first saw it ten years ago, even though I knew next to nothing about dance as an art form, I immediately sensed by the level of work ethics and dedication that even the very young dancers were demonstrating that this was something that simply could not be faked. At that point, I somehow realized that I wanted my daughter to experience that when she would be old enough. It was a world from which one could obviously learn a lot. Fortunately, she has been keen to dance, even from the earliest age.

It was therefore ironic and quite disappointing that this year in particular, when everybody was so looking forward to the first live-audience show since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, my daughter had to sit the performance out. Late last year, she suffered a growth-related injury to both of her knees, which forced her to take a break from dance for the rest of the season. To say the least, it has been quite hard for her to process. Still, she received a boost of positive emotions when she visited her teammates backstage to wish them luck backstage before the show. I am not sure if the traditional wishing of breaking legs was involved; it it was, it must have been almost too funny.

From my side, it is once again fascinating to see through my photos the incredible progress from the training sessions, where everyone was still waring masks, and where the kinks in the choreography were still being ironed out, to the finished performance pieces of the live show. I think we are all looking forward to more of those, once things hopefully return to a more normal state, both at the personal and the community levels.

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Sense of taste

I had a funny conversation with my 10-years-old daughter the other day. It turned to the COVID situation, as it does these days, more often than we’d like. I wondered if she understood what “self-monitoring for symptoms” actually meant.

“Watching out for cough, sneezing, sore throat, losing the sense of taste,” she said.

“What is that last one?” I asked.

“Well, you could start wearing mismatched socks, or dresses over gym pants – that sort of thing.”

She turned away to hide a smile.
That’s when you know that your leg is being pulled.