Category Archives: Thoughts on Thoughts

What does it mean to ‘Roll the Dice’ on COVID?

2020, COVID, Games!, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts, Uncategorized

A few days ago, I posted about some chilling COVID statistics[1], and said that each time you get COVID, you and your children ‘roll the dice’ (referring to the relatively high probability of death and/or organ damage/disability).

A friend of mine commented that this was ‘loaded language and emotional rhetoric’, and it came ‘across as an attempt at manipulation or a genuine reflection of fear felt by the author’.

Setting aside the obvious ‘loaded dice’ pun[2], I’d like to interrogate the meaning of ‘rolling the dice’ (and also the use of such rhetorical flourishes in a Health and Safety context).

“Rolling the dice” is generally[2] defined as “…something could have either a good result or a bad result”, or “to take a risk in the hopes of a fortunate result or gain“[3].

Colloquially, I’ve always thought of it in the second sense given by Miriam-Webster: “It’s a roll of the dice whether we succeed or fail.”, meaning that we are not in control of the outcome, and you should be prepared for the high chance of negative outcome.

Of course, ‘high chance’ is defined differently by different people, and in different situations, people having different risk thresholds than each other, and at different times. For example, a 1 in 10 chance of the bottom of your sock becoming wet[4] is very different than a 1 in 10 chance of being hit by a car.

For the sake of argument, let’s compare the above usage of ‘rolling the dice’ with the most popular[5] dice betting[5a] game ‘Craps‘. In Craps, the two most well known[6] sets of odds are ‘Pass’, or ‘will you win this set of rolls’, and winning on the first roll.

‘Pass’ has a win rate very close to 50%[7], perhaps the origin of the term ‘crapshoot’.

Winning on the first roll in Craps requires rolling either a ‘7’ or an ’11′[8], for a total probability of 8/36, or about 22%. Many might think that rolling a 7 is the way to win in Craps (it’s also one way to lose, if your first roll was 4,5,6,8,9,10). Rolling a 7 has a probability of 6/36, or about 17%.

17-22% is within the range of values found in the literature for the prevalence of Long COVID (currently listed as 5-50% by Wikipedia), and is not dissimilar to the 1 in 7.7 (about 13%) deaths in Canada in 2022 attributed to COVID.

One could also argue that ‘a roll of the dice’ is rolling one six-sided die[9], but that just gives us the 1 in 6 or ~17% chance above again. Higher (or lower) order polyhedral dice[10] (or larger numbers of dice) can give us arbitrarily different odds, but let’s stop here.

Today, Statscan reported on the prevalence and ‘Experiences of Canadians with long-term symptoms following COVID-19’.

"As seen in Chart 2, Canadians reporting two known or suspected COVID-19 infections (25.4%) were 1.7 times more likely to report prolonged symptoms than those reporting only one known or suspected infection (14.6%), and those with 3 or more infections (37.9%) 2.6 times more likely. " https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
“As seen in Chart 2, Canadians reporting two known or suspected COVID-19 infections (25.4%) were 1.7 times more likely to report prolonged symptoms than those reporting only one known or suspected infection (14.6%), and those with 3 or more infections (37.9%) 2.6 times more likely. ” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
# of inf. 	% LTS 	95% Confidence Interval (lower, upper)

1+ infections 	19.0 	17.3 	20.9
1 infection 	14.6 	12.8 	16.7
2 infections 	25.4 	21.5 	29.7
3+ infections 	37.9 	29.5 	47.0

Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian COVID-19 Antibody and Health Survey - Follow-up Questionnaire, 2023.

This shows that about 14.6% reported long-term symptoms after one infection (about 1 in 7), then of the remaining 85.4%, about one in 8 developed long-term symptoms after a second infection, then of the remaining 74.6%, about one in 6 developed long-term symptoms.[11]

Each of these is pretty close to ‘a roll of the dice’, as we defined above.

Perhaps more disturbing is that more than half of those who reported long-term symptoms reported no improvement in those symptoms over time:

"Almost half of Canadians who reported that they continue to experience long-term symptoms also reported no improvement over time" "Many Canadians with long-term symptoms experience a protracted symptom duration. As of June 2023, 58.2% of infected Canadians who ever reported long-term symptoms continue to experience them. Among Canadian adults who continued to experience long-term symptoms, 79.3% had been experiencing symptoms for 6 months or more, including 42.2% with symptoms for one year or more (Figure 1)." https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
“Almost half of Canadians who reported that they continue to experience long-term symptoms also reported no improvement over time” “Many Canadians with long-term symptoms experience a protracted symptom duration. As of June 2023, 58.2% of infected Canadians who ever reported long-term symptoms continue to experience them. Among Canadian adults who continued to experience long-term symptoms, 79.3% had been experiencing symptoms for 6 months or more, including 42.2% with symptoms for one year or more (Figure 1).” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm

Also, more than 1 in 5 of those with persistent symptoms (600,000 Canadians) missed days of work or school, missing an average of 24 days each.

Having shown that this is a reasonable use of the phrase ‘roll of the dice’, I also wanted to address the idea of using emotional appeals in public education about health and safety.

Here is an example of the phrase being used in a brochure by the Australian National Electrical and Communications Association

A number of years I had the privilege of attending safety training run by Minerva Canada, where a talk was being given by a representative from a car manufacturing company that you’ve heard of. He was talking about their ‘getting to zero’ workplace accidents project, and he mentioned that at some point, after you’ve tried asking people nicely enough times, you have to get the ‘300 lb gorilla to go tell the guy to wear his @#$%ing safety harness’.

That was my sixth and this will be my seventh post talking about the dangers of COVID. At some point, using stronger (but still accurate) language to educate people about the dangers they and their children face due to action or inaction becomes necessary if we actually want to solve the problem.

Thank you for reading, and stay safe out there.

“Get boosted, mask (with an N95 respirator) when you’re indoors with others. Get COVID as few times as you can, and if you get it, rest up longer than you think you need to. Push for better (HEPA) air filtering and ventilation (more air interchanges per hour).”

[1] “tl;dr: About 1 in 8 deaths in 2022 in Canada were caused by COVID-19. Organ damage caused by COVID seems to be persistent. Each time you get COVID, you and your children roll the dice again as to whether you die or get Long COVID. Get boosted, mask (with an N95 respirator) when you’re indoors with others. Get COVID as few times as you can, and if you get it, rest up longer than you think you need to. Push for better (HEPA) air filtering and ventilation (more air interchanges per hour).” link to post

[2] In this case, specifically by Miriam-Webster
[3] Idioms Online

[4] Captain Minor Annoyance (abbreviated MI’) is the creation of Ryan George, one of my favourite Youtubers

[5] In North America. Apparently, Craps, and its predecessor ‘Hazard’ are nowhere near as popular in the rest of the world.

[5a] I mention the ‘most popular dice betting game’ partially because most people will have a passing familiarity, I know some of the odds, and those odds are easy to explain. Compare with the games on the ‘top 10 all-time best-seller list‘: Monopoly (3), Clue (5) (uses one six-sided die for movement, but the deduction and knowing your opponents is far more important for gameplay), and Backgammon (8)

[6] I admit, most well known to me, based on learning about Craps during a probability module in high school. There are a large number of ‘standard’ betting options in Craps, but I suspect most people will not have heard of most of them.

[7] Wikipedia says the Craps ‘Pass’ house edge is less than 2%, similar to that of Blackjack, also well-known for have a very slim house edge.

[8] TIL that ’11’ is often called ‘Yo-leven’, to prevent confusion with ‘seven’.

[9] You’d be wrong, as I define ‘die’ as one die, and ‘dice’ as two or more, but many people disagree.

[10] Most common are 4 (tetrahedron, don’t step on these!), 6 (the familiar cube), 8 (octahedron), 10 (not a platonic solid, but a ‘Pentagonal Trapezohedron‘ #til), 12 (dodecahedron), 20 (icosahedron)

[11] Here, I’m assuming that each time a person catches COVID, they either progress into Long COVID, or stay ‘long-term unaffected’. This allows modeling of each subsequent infection independently. With the numbers above, 1st infection has a ~14.6% chance of leading to Long Covid (1 in 6.85), of the remaining 85.4 people, 25.4-14.6=10.8 of them or 10.8/85.4 = 12.6% or 1 in 7.9, then of the remaining 74.6 people, 37.9-25.4=12.5 of them or 12.5/74.6 = 16.8% or one in 5.97. Note that the last number includes those with more than three infections, so one would expect the number for 3 infections to be less than that. Also note that biology is often not linear, and a linear model such as this one may be simplistic, and should only be used for illustrative purposes, no matter how well it fits the curve.

“How do you feel?”

Idle Speculation, Space!, Thoughts on Thoughts, Uncategorized

Spock is the center[1] of Star Trek. Many others have written (or videoed) about this, either about Spock himself (and Leonard Nimoy’s excellent portrayal), or the ‘part-human’ outsider archetype that has been present in every Star Trek show/movie.

Perhaps my favourite Spock scene (or at least the one that I find myself quoting most regularly) is this one from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Shortly after having his katra rejoined with his body, Spock is working through a set of tests of memory and problem solving across numerous disciplines, when, after successfully navigating through and solving myriad technical problems three at a time, he is blocked and stumped by the simple and very ‘human'[2] question: “How do you feel?”

Screenshot of the "How do you feel?" scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Screenshot of the “How do you feel?” scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

I suspect that many other neurodivergent folks also saw a lot of themselves in Spock. Whether it was aspirational (such as his ability to quickly solve problems across disparate disciplines very quickly in critical situations), or because we connected with his ‘outsider’ nature (his slow learning to be more in touch with his human side, or Data’s yearning to be more human), or even because we also wanted to be part of a tightly-knit team, where the science officer would figure out part of the problem, and pass it off to the leader, who would assemble it into action and a solution.

Much of this blog has been about chronicling my journey to better understand myself, from my first post on paying more attention to and bringing out fleeting thoughts, to my entire category ‘Thoughts on Thoughts‘. Through all of this, I continue to search to understand how I feel and why I feel the way I do. In a way, I think[3] that working to understand how one feels is fundamental to the human condition, and we do ourselves a disservice by not investing in investigating ourselves in this way.

There are fundamental questions humans have been asking ourselves since time immemorial: ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What is our purpose?’. Perhaps a lot of the answers boil down to ‘How do you feel?’

[1] Many of the meanings of ‘center’ are applicable here, whether it’s the logical ‘heart’, or the ‘focus’, the self-insert for an otherwise under-served audience, or even the person or archetype that many plots revolve around, whether it’s solving problems or being put in peril.

[2] This is part of Amanda Grayson (Spock’s mother)’s work to help Spock reattach his human side, now that his katra has been reattached ‘in the Vulcan way.

[3] Or feel?

See the entire scene here:

“How do you feel?” (new window)


(inline)

You can also see Spock’s answer to the question at the end of the movie, showing that he now better understands friendship and himself (source for this insight):

“I feel fine.” (new window)


(inline)

On the Importance of Encouraging People to ask (Sincere) Questions

Internet Culture, Teaching, Thoughts on Thoughts, Uncategorized

Recently, a couple of friends of mine shared the following meme:

Image of text showing a list of 'People also ask' suggestions from a Google search answering a question about the movie 'Oppenheimer'.
Google Search ‘People also ask’:
(circled) ‘Is Oppenheimer based on a true story’
‘Is Einstein in Oppenheimer movie?
Why did Cillian Murphy lose weight for Oppenheimer?’
‘Did Cillian Murphy have to lose weight for Oppeneimer?’
(circled) ‘Is the nuke in Openheimer real?’
(circled) ‘Did they drop a real nuke for Oppenheimer?’

On the face of it, it may seem harmless, poking some fun at people who not only know less than you, but who know less than you consider reasonable (or perhaps even ‘possible’!)[1].

However, this laughing at others can lead to contempt, and a reluctance in the willingness of others to ask questions, due to the loss of psychological safety.

So, why might people laugh at those who know less about a topic than they?

Some describe surprise as a necessary component of laughter. You can be surprised that others know not just less than you know, but even less than you think is possible to know. This cognitive bias causing this surprise is a subset of the ‘Curse of Knowledge‘, perhaps best summed up by this drawing from Rajesh Mathur:

Curse of Knowledge Bias diagram from Rajesh Mathur: Outer Circle titled 'What you know' Smaller circle titled 'What you expect them to know' Smallest circle titled 'What your audience knows'
Curse of Knowledge Bias diagram from Rajesh Mathur:
Outer Circle titled ‘What you know’
Smaller circle titled ‘What you expect them to know’
Smallest circle titled ‘What your audience knows’

Sometimes, however, the laughter is not just about surprise, but also comes from a place of insecurity, the desire (conscious or not) to place one’s self above others. This could also be a trauma response, perhaps to experiences with ‘Sealioning‘, where people will repeatedly throw bad-faith questions into a debate or forum instead of engaging with the argument directly.

Another variant of this occurs often in teachers (and oddly enough, IT professionals), where if you’re continually hearing the same question from many different people, it can feel like ‘they just don’t learn'[2], because each year (or semester or day), you get a new person who hasn’t asked that question yet.

So, why might people be asking questions like this?
– They genuinely don’t know: As shown in the diagram above, the variability in knowledge between humans is vast. Even though you know about Oppenheimer because you’ve read multiple books on the subject[3], others might only have a passing knowledge, or even none, despite his pivotal involvement with the start of the Atomic Age.

– They might be mostly sure, but their experience with the thing made them doubt, or they heard a rumor….and the consequence[4] of their assumption being wrong is so large, the ‘importance x likelihood'[5] equation pushes them to ask the question, humans being loss-averse.

– They’re asking a slightly different question: ‘Is Oppenheimer based on a true story’ could mean a lot of different things. There’s a wide range between how much the movie ‘300‘[6] is based on a true story and how much ‘Oppenheimer‘ is. The question could easily be a rephrasing of “how close is the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ to a ‘true story’?”

– They may have difficulties expressing the specific question they want answered: I think it’s worth mentioning that the ability to ask specific targeted questions into a search engine is a (mostly learned) skill, and like all skills, is subject to privilege and ableist gatekeeping. In fact, one could argue that a large part of the uptake of GPT-like software is their ability to answer peoples’ questions when they are not phrased precisely, helping those who are less able to quickly articulate precise thoughts in written form.
– The search engine could be condensing or de-duplicating the wording of questions asked: On a purely technical note, the search engine has a limited amount of space on the page, and it would make sense that they would condense similar questions into perhaps the simplest and clearest version, making it look like people were very commonly asking a simple question.

Thanks for joining me on this wandering journey. I want to learn (and help others learn) to treat others with more kindness, and it’s important to me to deconstruct all of the reasons behind why I (or others) might be doing this. Thanks for reading!

[1] Having done a bunch of teaching, I was aware of the importance of teaching to different styles of learning, and also to different levels of knowledge, but I remember first hearing about this specific subset of this bias relatively recently, probably in a meme, where an expert in a field says ‘how can they not know about this ?’

[2] See also ‘Endless September‘.

[3] Most of my knowledge and understanding of Oppenheimer is from Feynman.

[4] This consequence can be social, such as ‘why didn’t you know about this?’, or personal, such as ‘I don’t want to change the way I think about this unless I have to’, amongst others.

[5] Humans are generally bad at judging the overall expected value of ‘Low-Probability, High-Impact’ events, which is probably why insurance is a thing, although the reduction in distraction/open-loops is probably worth it.

[6] Yes, I know ‘300’ is based on a graphic novel, that’s part of the point I’m trying to make. I’m specifically mentioning 300 because of the large number of known historical inaccuracies and general problematic-ness. There’s also a huge conversation about ‘The Western Canon’ that is out of scope.

The Feracious Potential of Autumn

2020, Thoughts on Thoughts

I went for a walk today. This would not normally be notable, except that it was only the second time I’d been out on a walk on my own during the pandemic, and the first time since S went home to visit her parents.

It was a nice night. The perfect, slightly chilled temperature of late summer/early autumn, a light breeze bringing smells of something delicious, something burning, just cool enough to make you think of goosebumps.

People always talk about the potential, the bountiful feelings of spring, but I think that the fall speaks to me even more strongly. I’m not sure how much of it is that the heat of summer has finally broken[1], how much of it is that it signifies going back to school, the creativity and freedom/safety of end-of-summer music camp[2]. Conversely, it signals the end of summer, the world now feels like there is a deadline, that time is moving forward, and that things must be done before it is too late[3].

Whatever the reason, walking outside just now, I feel full of potential, and I’m looking forward to expressing more of it.

Saturn & Jupiter, sandwiched between the terrible streetlight pollution in my neighbourhood.
Saturn & Jupiter, peeping out from behind the terrible streetlight pollution in my neighbourhood.

Photograph taken 2020-08-18:
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/canada/toronto

[1] Interestingly, I grew up in a room that was directly over the furnace, so I think that I have a little more heat tolerance/expectation/less blood circulation to my extremities[1a] than many others do. However, when it gets much above 23, I can feel my mental efficiency going down. I can still function, I’m still in emotional control of myself, but creativity, of the ‘sitting down creating something'[1b] type is greatly curtailed. My guess is that there’s something about the brain overheating, or energy being used elsewhere in the body (it does take some energy to ensure homeostasis during sweating). But back to cogitation and heat tolerance. It is known that the human brain uses about 20-25% of the body’s energy budget, and “As a metabolically demanding organ with intense heat production, the functional activity, and energy efficiency of the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to fluctuations in temperature”. My understanding of this is that one of the reasons scalp wounds bleed so profusely is that much of the purpose of blood flow to and around the brain is thermal regulation, basically keeping your brain cool so that it can keep thinking efficiently.

[1a] Also, tall people problems.

[1b] Not the ‘react with witty remarks’ type, that is pretty hard-coded, and seems to activate upon waking, and is almost impossible to turn off.

[1c] I was going to make a comment here about how the heart & brain make more ATP per glucose than other parts of the body (38 instead of 36, or 36 instead of 34), but it seems that science has moved on since I was in school, and I could not find a source for different cell types or organs generating different amounts of ATP, and also it seems that due to leaky mitochondiral membranes and other factors, human (eukaryote) metabolism is thought to generate only about 30 ATP molecules per glucose molecule[1d].

[1d] 29.85, at last count.

[2] Music camp holds a very special place in my heart. Similar to High Hrothgar, it is a peaceful place, very disconnected from the troubles of this world. For a number of years, I spent the last two weeks of summer at National Music Camp, playing music for five hours a day, spending time with old and new friends, spending time outside. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of walking from place to place, and hearing the drifting sounds of people practicing and making music being a completely normal and natural thing. One could use the percentage of our time we spend making music as a metric for quality of life, and as an indictment of our modern society.

[3] Similar to squirrels saving for winter, like the one earlier this week that perched on the chair six feet from me and noisily and ostentatiously ate a carrot.

Note: I tried a few different titles before I settled on ‘feracious’, meaning ‘producing in abundance; fertile, fruitful‘. ‘Subtle’ is not quite right, as it’s more of a quiet power, and ‘flowering’ or ‘flourishing’ are really more spring or summer words, respectively.

Processing Endgame II: Iron Man (2008) [SPOILERS]

Analysis, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Thoughts on Thoughts, Uncategorized

Please note that this is one a series of posts, all of which may contain spoilers for the MCU, and particularly Endgame.

Music: “Avengers Theme Remix”

First on the list to watch was Iron Man (2008). I had watched a few of the ‘best of’ scenes on Youtube, including the really impactful opening scene, and when he first takes the Mark II out for a spin.

A lot of the hagiography about Tony Stark talks about how he has a lot of features that make him an effective superhero. They talk about him being a futurist, super-smart, and handy. This movie perhaps emphasizes his handy-ness more than any other, with the extended scene of him building an innovative new Iron Man suit while a prisoner in a cave.

But what I think people perhaps forget is while he goes through a character development arc, his armor perhaps goes through even more of a change. His perhaps greatest ability is to learn from experience, and adapt by changing his actions and the tools he builds.

In this first movie, we see three versions of his Iron Man suit: The first, iconic grey suit that I remember so well from his first appearance in comics in the ’60s[1], the redone silver-coloured Mark II, and the familiar red & gold Mark III.

The suits go from working for a few minutes (Mark I), to almost being able to beat altitude records (Mark II) in what is probably a few weeks (or months).

And that’s when disaster almost strikes[2]. The suit ices up, and Tony has to manually de-ice it[3] in mid-fall. Luckily, he survives, and with this survival comes a small bit of learning.

This learning is used when making the Mark III, and is an important point in the final battle scene.

This learning from experience will be shown in later movies, but looking at it here, from Mark I->Mark II, the suit is streamlined, focus is placed on being able to fly (presumably because if it had been able to fly, Tony would not have had to walk out of the desert), and most of the weapons are removed (apparently because it was a flight test model). Tony also adds an automated way to don the suit[4], perhaps because his friend and compatriot[5] in building the Mark I dies to give him the time required to finish donning it and charging it up.

This learning from trauma, perhaps a source of his perfectionism is another theme that is consistent throughout the series.

From the Mark II to the Mark III, there’s the aforementioned de-icing package, along with the re-addition of some weaponry, as Tony was planning in a semi-revenge fashion to go destroy all of the weapons that bore his name that had made it onto the black market.

But there are two other things that make a huge difference. From the Mark I to Mark II, Tony integrated his home AI J.A.R.V.I.S. (Paul Bettany) into his suit. It’s difficult to describe how much of a difference it would make to have an AI companion riding along with you, vs. a mere targeting computer with Heads-Up Display. Part of the reason to have it there is very effective in movie terms, as it gives Robert Downey Jr. someone to argue with and be snarky with (also a super-important part of the Iron Man character), but even for someone who is great at multi-tasking, having a separate intelligence there, ready to sort through all of the data to tell you what is important *right now* is invaluable in a life-or-death situation[6].

The second (and perhaps even more important than anything else here) thing that makes Tony different is his willingness to embarrass himself. You see him videotaping himself testing all of his experiments, presumably so that he can watch the replay and learn from it.

Can you imagine Thor, or Captain America experimenting with repulsor boots so that they flip over and land unceremoniously on the ground? It’s totally out of character for them. Perhaps this is different, because we actually see into Tony’s practice workshop, and we never got the chance to see Thor first learning how to wield Mjolnir.

Next up: Iron Man II, one of the less-well known (and lower rated movies), but we’ll see how it goes on a re-watch!

Other notes: Pepper Potts’ ‘proof Tony has a heart’ moment was really poignant, and the interactions between the two of them were fun and meaningful to watch. I especially liked her bravery, and when she stuck up for herself and gave as good as she got.

Messages: How easy it is to fall into the mental trap of believing that your actions are not hurting others or having unintended consequences, if you never see them… #chardev

[1] I was lucky enough when I was growing up to have access to a few cardboard boxes of old comics from the late ’60s. I still remember the first Iron Man story, I think from before he had his own comic series, the first story where he builds his first suit, and before he paints it. It’s difficult to separate how I felt then about it then from the movie adaptation, and how much of it is from a soft place in my heart, vs. just feeling familiar[8] from childhood….

[2] There are so many places in these movies that disaster almost strikes, that there must be alternate timelines for each of them. Earth-199999 feels super-lucky.

[3] Well Chekov’s gun-d by the ‘cool suit-up montage’ (great multiple-use of a scene) showing the demo of all of the control surfaces.

[4] There are a number of iterations of this, with so many different ways to don the suits, or otherwise adapt to situations, that it almost deserves its own post.

[5] Shaun Toub‘s Ho Yinsen was the most poignant part of the movie for me, as I knew he was going to die (because I remembered enough of the plot), but I had forgotten that he was willing to die partially (or mostly) because his family had already been killed by the group that had captured him and Tony. There’s something here about the necessary sacrifice of good people to thwart evil, and from the (likely deliberate) casting of an an Iranian-American actor, about how people of all races and backgrounds can be good people, and we should be working with them.

[6] And your house robot will bring you your spare arc reactor, so you can put it back in your chest and save your life… 🙂

[7] This ability to give a voice command and have it followed intelligently will become super important later in the first Avengers movie. #staytuned

[8] I wonder how much of it is that Tony falls into the ‘scientist/inventor’ category of Marvel Superheroes, that speaks to me, or spoke to me especially when I was growing up, and that was how I saw my life/career unfolding.

Processing Endgame I: Preludes

Internet Culture, Reviews, Thoughts on Thoughts

Please note that this is one a series of posts, all of which may contain spoilers for the MCU, and particularly Endgame.

People talk about the cultural phenomenon of Avengers:Endgame, but I don’t know if it’s been fully addressed how the movie, indeed the culmination of the series has, and is continuing to affect viewers.

Trying to avoid lines (and get reasonably good seats), we ended up seeing Avengers:Endgame the Tuesday the week after opening. For various reasons[1], we decided to take the afternoon off to watch it. I laughed, I cried, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I left the theater with a feeling of satisfaction, knowing that they had done the movie justice, that (aside from a few issues[2]) it was a satisfying conclusion to a 22-movie series.

So, it took me a while to realize what was happening in the subsequent weeks. I found myself watching analysis, and re-watching scenes from old MCU movies (mostly Avengers:Assemble), especially scenes of Iron Man. It wasn’t until I watched a youtube video about how Endgame actors reacted to the movie, and read Dave Bautista’s tweet about how he was still processing, almost a week after viewing the movie.

I realized that I was still processing. I also realized that Iron Man was quite my favourite character[3]. It took me a while to notice that I might have been grieving, and re-watching ‘All Iron-Man suitups’ videos wasn’t going to bring him back.

So, perhaps as a way of processing, perhaps as a way of getting closure, perhaps as a way to notice all the things we didn’t see the first time[4], S & I independently came up with the idea of re-watching the MCU, in order[5].

So, please enjoy this series of reviews/processing/introspection.

[1] We really like afternoon movies, as you can fully react to them, then, while still processing, go outside and walk in the sun, perhaps get some dinner. Also, it was much easier to get good seats during the day on a weekday.

[2] I’ll get in to this later, but I was most bothered by the treatment of Black Widow.

[3] Maybe since my youth, but I know I def. recognized him from comics I read when I was growing up. I might have liked Cyclops more growing up, but the X-Men movie version of him was pretty unengaging.

[4] I would mention the Infinity Stones here, but my understanding is that they didn’t intend for all of the movies to be about them, until about GotG:Vol1.

[5] Starting with Iron Man, and probably skipping Hulk, as neither of us are particularly interested in it (even less than Thor:2, that S slept through[6]).

[6] In her defense, she may have been sick, and Dayquil:SEVERE may have been involved.

Why Life Coaching?

Agile, Organizing Systems, Thoughts on Thoughts

A friend of mine recently posted a few questions about fb about life coaching. I felt that I had more to say than could be conveniently be expressed in a fb comment, so you’re getting it here.

The questions they asked were (mild editing for clarity):

0) ‘I wonder if now’s an opportune time for me to try it’
1) ‘General opinions, and beliefs about its effectiveness in various contexts’
2) ‘What can it do (for you, or more generally), and how does it do that?’
3) ‘How do I find someone really good and really compatible with me and my goals?’

0) ‘I wonder if now’s an opportune time for me to try it’

I’m a firm believer in the idea that the best time to do something is ‘now’. There’s a great story about a famous barbershop coach (Greg Lyne, I think). He was talking with the leadership of a chorus about him giving them some coaching, and they said something like “We’re looking for a five year plan to get better.” His response was “Why wait? Be good now!” Similar to Agile software development practices, you want to test your ideas and theories as soon as possible in as-close-to-real-world-situations, so that you can iterate on them. If you have an idea that might help you improve everything about you and your life, why would you wait to try it out, especially if it might take some time to ramp up?

1) ‘General opinions, and beliefs about its effectiveness in various contexts’

I feel like in our culture (and probably many others), it is considered a sign of weakness to ask for help. And yet, we do this every day. Every time that we exchange money for a good or a service, we are asking for help. You could learn to make your own shoes, or you could perform some task where you have more of a competitive advantage, receive money for that, and then exchange that money for shoes. By specializing[1] like that, we make our modern civilization possible. A Life Coach is a specialist in helping you achieve your potential, whatever that might be.

So, what is Life Coaching? I see it as:

– Helping you achieve clarity on your goals
– Helping you figure out how you are ‘getting in your own way'[2] of achieving those goals
– Helping you work through yourself to make progress and eventually achieve your goals

I’ve personally found it useful for ‘getting unstuck’ in job and career, for helping me unlock my love of writing, and for helping me set boundaries in various parts of my life. But I think the clarity it can bring is the key, and the foundation upon which all other things are built. If you know exactly what you want, and why, you can be so much more focused and effective.

2) ‘What can it do (for you, or more generally), and how does it do that?’

I think I’ve answered much of this under question 1), but I’ll go a little more into the ‘how’.

First, you want to figure out what your goals actually are. From my experience, this often includes some individuation and separation of your ‘social self’ (what others want from you) and your ‘essential self’ (what you actually want on the inside).

Next, you want to figure out how you are preventing yourself from doing these things. You may be plagued by self-doubts brought on by years of exposure to certain types of people, you may be a perfectionist who never starts anything because it will never be good enough, you may be spending all of your time trying to please others, and never taking any time for yourself. This seems to me like a very personal and individual process, involving a number of exercises designed to help you to better understand yourself and your interactions/experiences.

Then, now that you know your goals and how you’re preventing yourself from achieving them, you make plans and start to work towards these goals.

It’s an iterative and very personal process, but it can be tremendously helpful. As I mentioned above, I’ve personally found it useful for ‘getting unstuck’ in job and career, for helping me unlock my love of writing, and for helping me set boundaries in various parts of my life.

3) ‘How do I find someone really good and really compatible with me and my goals?’

Like finding a job or a life partner, good fit with a life coach is very important. I don’t have any easy rules to follow here. Ultimately, you’re at the mercy of your ability to judge people (and more importantly, how you feel around those people).

I would treat it as an interview, the type where you are interviewing them in the same way that they are interviewing you. See if the types of questions they’re asking might help you achieve clarity. See if they are expressing realistic expectations about what a life coach can and cannot do (you yourself need to be engaged, and it can take months). But perhaps most of all, see if you trust the person you’re talking to[3]. Do you feel comfortable talking with them[4]?

With all of the questions above, you can always just simply ask them of a prospective life coach, and see how they answer. You can glean a lot of how and whether they share your values, and how they will approach things. Read their website. Read any testimonials they may have.

If you trust your gut[5], and make sure it feels right, you should be okay.

I’m currently seeing Gorett Reis for life coaching, and she’s fantastic.

[1]And mass production, and whole host of other things. I understand this example is somewhat flip, but appropriate for the circumstances of this post.

[2]My Life Coach, my old singing instructor, and my Inner Game-reading performance coach used this same analogy. I think it’s a good one.

[3]I was lucky enough to have known my Life Coach for a number of years beforehand.

[4]Or, if you are not comfortable talking with people, do you at least feel more comfortable talking with them than other people you’ve just met?

[5]My first post in this blog talked about this concept, and I believe that learning to better trust and understand yourself is probably the best thing you can ever do.

A Guided Meditation

Thoughts on Thoughts, Uncategorized

This was inspired by a guided ‘being in your body’ meditation with Gorett, my life coach. You may also be interested in my previous post on this. Anyway, here goes:

First, you want to be wholly in your body.

Close your eyes, and make yourself comfortable.

Walk through each of your senses, and see what each of them are saying.

You may still see some colour, depending on how much light there is where you are. You may see some bright spots and dark spots, depending on what you were last looking at. Watch them. Watch them fade as your eyes acclimatize to being closed. You may see some of the sparkle patterns or moving objects that happen sometimes when you close your eyes. Watch them for a while. See how they move. Acknowledge them. Understand that they happen and that that is okay.

Next, figure out what your ears are telling you. You may hear someone in the next room, a siren in the distance, the beating of your heart. What do you smell? Is it a familiar smell? Is there anything at all? Can you smell yourself? Sometimes you can smell the inside of your own nose, similar to how you can see the inside of your eyelids. Acknowledge these things, glory in them, let them wash over you.

What are you tasting? Is it the thing you just ate? The mint from the toothpaste? Something else? Acknowledge it. Experience it fully, let it wash over you.

Where is your body? Think about each of your limbs and where they are. Are you sitting down? Lying down? Experience it fully and let it wash over you.

What are you touching? Are your hands in your lap? What is the sensation of your hands on your legs? Feel your hands, your lower arms, your upper arms as they come out of your shoulder. Flex your shoulders just a little bit to remind them that they’re alive. Feel the sensations as your muscles move. Now relax your shoulders, your arms. Feel your toes. What are they feeling? Feel your feet, your ankles, your calves, your knees, your thighs. Feel your pelvis, your hips, rotate them just slightly to know they’re there, to put them in a slightly more comfortable spot. Feel your lower belly, think about what you most recently ate, and let it go. Take a deep breath and let it go. Feel your heart beating. Feel your breath in and out. In and out. Move your shoulders again. Feel your neck, feel your ears, the hair on the back of your head, your chin, your mouth, your nose, your cheeks, your eyes, all the way to the follicles on the top of your head.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in…breathe out. Breathe in…breathe out.

You are in a safe space now. You may be hearing a voice right now, telling you things about yourself that you don’t want to hear, that you have something lacking. Acknowledge that voice, feel it fully, experience it, and let it go. Breathe in, experience it, breathe out, let it go. Breathe in, feel it, breathe out, let it go.

You are now allowed to forgive yourself. We are forgiving ourselves for many reasons. We could talk about absolution, we could speak of religion, or spirituality, but here we are forgiving ourselves because the voice in our head is getting in the way of us doing the things we want to do. Acknowledge the voice, experience it, forgive it. Breathe in, breathe out. This is a safe space of forgiveness.

Be in your body. Check in on your body, are you still comfortable? Things may have shifted. Move yourself a little bit to make yourself a little bit more comfortable.

Breathe in, breathe out. You are in a safe space. Acknowledge, fully experience, forgive, let go. Breathe in, breathe out. You are in a safe space. Acknowledge, fully experience, forgive, let go. Breathe in, breathe out. You are in a safe space. Acknowledge, fully experience, forgive, let go.

Now, on your own time, you can take as much time as you want, you can open your eyes and share with me how you are feeling, what you might be thinking. On your own time, take as much time as you want.

Flowing Around Obstacles

Thoughts on Thoughts

When I was working at the University, I would teach safety to each of the undergrad classes.

For me, part of teaching safety was helping the students find a mental space where they could act in a safe way in the lab.

Every time that I made a serious mistake, or I was hurt at work, it was when I felt time pressure, that my emotions were high, that I was rushing.

I talked about a few tactics to help with reducing the tendency to rush, including the importance of proper preparation and planning. Even as the people running the lab, proper preparation and scheduling during the lab turned a 4 hour marathon into a much more manageable 2.5 hour run. Having all of the participants also being prepared would only help this further.

Perhaps knowing that not all students would have prepared for all of the labs they would encounter, I also talked about general tactics for dealing with strong emotions in a setting where they could prove dangerous. Interestingly, looking back, it shares a lot in common with how I now think about meditation[1].

I would tell that what I did when I wanted to deal with strong emotion in a setting where that was not useful was to take all of the emotion in, to experience it fully, and then let it go[2].

I internally sometimes use the analogy of “water off a duck’s back”, but I think a far more apt analogy is how a cat feels when you accidentally do something to it. It feels the emotions immediately, reacts, and then goes back to sleeping or cleaning itself, or whatever else it was doing.

Fully experience the emotion, then let it go.

This brings me to the title of this post, ‘Flowing around obstactles’.

Last time, I wrote about writer’s block and the obstacles of tiredness and the fear of not doing justice to the topics that speak to you the most.

I talked about flow, the idea that you know that the obstacles are there, but you aren’t letting them affect you emotionally. It’s not a rigid or brittle ‘not letting’, more of a ‘letting them flow around you’.

Growing up, I focused on the concept of “don’t let it affect you”, which is effective at pushing things aside and allowing you to focus on the thing in front of you, but it isn’t very helpful at helping you to determine exactly what should be the thing in front of you.

More recently, with my life coach, we worked on relaxing into working through obstacles[3].

This feels similar to letting emotions flow into, around, then out of you.

You acknowledge them, but they seem to have no power over you. You have your essential self that you have found parts of and are piecing together, and the obstacles are of no moment, and you can flow around them, or they flow around you.

It’s not that the obstacles disappear, or are non-existent. It’s not that they don’t matter emotionally. You can see that you have emotions about them, but you can flow through that to the state where you can focus on solving the problem. It’s similar to understanding how your emotions or hackles can be raised in a situation, but it has nothing to do with the person in front of you[4]. You notice this, you flow around and through the emotions, you find the root cause, and you solve the problem.

Good examples escape me right now, but I think you get the idea. Either way, comment below!

Next time, we’ll talk about forgiveness and the essential self. Stay tuned!

[1]And the Flame and the Void, which some people have tried in real life, with interesting results.

[2]Experienced readers will note that this is an interesting counterpoint to how I was raised, which was to ‘not let it affect you’, with subtle but important differences.

[3]Somewhat similar to re-incorporating your shadow, relaxing, and becoming more whole.

[4]It’s probably the patriarchy.

Being in Your Body

Thoughts on Thoughts

Very recently, I came to a personal epiphany about meditation. I had known about it since time immemorial, had friends who extolled its virtues, and had heard about the relevant scientific studies, but had never really understood it myself.

Similar to how salmon skin rolls were my introduction to sushi, I would end up discovering meditation from an unexpected direction. One day at life coaching, my life coach and I were working on ways to help me deal with an upcoming stressful event, when we came upon the idea to do a guided exercise of ‘being in my body’.

Coming out of the exercise, I was extremely relaxed. The way I see it, part of it is the relaxation from sitting in one place, actually listening to your body and how it’s uncomfortable, and dealing with that, but most of it comes from finding all of the things which are affecting you, all the things you are paying attention to without realizing it[1]. You use meditation to find these things, make them conscious, then you can deal with them or let them wash over you. Either way, you can move beyond them. In the limit, you can do a guided meditation, then when you come out of it, you may notice things which were bothering you in a much more conscious way, allowing you to deal with them more easily.

‘Being in your body’ was a much more accessible phrase for me than ‘meditation’, perhaps because it was a new phrase, or a much simpler phrase, without any of the social and cultural attachments of ‘meditation’. ‘Meditation’ always felt very abstract, something that you would do with your mind only, something that you would do in an uncomfortable position in a boring way. Doing it in a trusting environment in a comfortable position I think was key for me. ‘Being in your body’ was also key. A vital part of the process (for me, at least), is being/becoming aware of as many parts of your body that you can, and acknowledging their effects on you[2]. So, for me, at least at the start, it is much more about body consciousness than mind consciousness[3].

The other key for me was forgiveness. IIRC, G made the connection that many people find it difficult to accept failures in themselves, and they can further find it very difficult to forgive themselves for these failures. When you cannot forgive yourself inside your own head, it is no longer a safe space, and you no longer want to spend time there. So, you might spend time distracting yourself, you might self-medicate in any one of a number of ways.

But the first step towards solving this is to understand what is going on, to understand what you are saying to yourself all of the time. Then you need to allow yourself that safe space inside your head by forgiving yourself. I don’t have a magic answer here (although I plan to write on forgiveness later), all I can say is what worked for me. What might help is understanding that the words you say to yourself may not originally be your own, and differentiating between these words and what you actually feel may help you forgive yourself.

Either way, after going through this, when I got home, S told me that seemed almost asleep standing up, I was so relaxed. I know I didn’t feel asleep, just very relaxed and at peace.

– Be in your body
– Forgive yourself
– Relax

Thanks for reading! Just writing about that helped me relive/re-experience some of those feelings, and I’m feeling much more relaxed.

[1]Cf. Getting Things Done’s ‘Open Loops’ writ large.

[2]I understand that this inconsistently reductionist and simplistic. I imagine that most of my writing is this way. After this exercise, I am at peace with this. 😀

[3]This is also reductionist and wrong, but beyond the scope.