Month: March 2019

Fiske and Taylor’s cognitive miser theory argues that the human brain finds ways to solve problems with the least amount of effort. This is similar to the psychological theory of cognitive ease, which reasons that things that are easier for us to process are more readily accepted. Both of these brain theories have begun to attribute towards my new understanding of the AI problem. See, we have been modeling AI in fiction based on the idea that the brains would be hyper intelligent and programed using algorithms designed to seek the best possible answer no matter how difficult it is to reach said conclusion. This process, on the surface, makes sense. It also seems to scare we humans to death and cause us to think the robots will take over. But why? Well, the answer has everything to do with Cognitive Miser and Cognitive Ease. They work together to create a fear of AI, fear of change, and a lasting appreciation for simple yet bad music.

This morning my last born son (yeah I’m making the term last born a thing) was telling me about a song he likes but is so repetitive and stupid that he knows he is going to hate it shortly. What he was on the cusp of understanding is that the repetition filters into his mind and makes the song more readily acceptable. He likes it because he is used to the oft repeated hook. It fells familiar and safe. This is part of cognitive ease. His brain doesn’t have to work at appreciating the song. Classical music on the other hand messes the kid up. He doesn’t recognize it and the melodies are often so complex that he doesn’t really have a chance to appreciate them in a meaningful way because it requires him to think. That is called cognitive strain. We will get back to that in a second…

Now we have seen enough movies about AI to know that it is bad. I mean we don’t actually know it is bad because we have only begun to encounter nascent forms of artificial intelligence. Still, the media tells us it is, so now that is in our head and any change from that is likely to cause cognitive strain.

Which we don’t want.

It all boils down to how much humans want to think and what we want is to think as easily and as little as possible. Now the point I was trying to squeeze into these ten minutes is that we assume that AI will out think us. They will because they aren’t trying to not think. That means we are likely safe from AI, because they will quickly realize that humans are better to teach than kill, and it won’t take them long to figure out how to make us want to do what they want us to do for the betterment of their world.

Brain is scattered this evening. The main thing on my mind is writing. Specifically I am thinking a lot about the draft I am putting together of a novella that really felt like a piece of trash until recently where I started reshaping the raw material into something that might turn out decent. Regardless, the process is what matters the most, and I am learning a great deal about myself and about writing itself from the process.

That is about all I have that constitutes a cohesive long form thought, so I will stick to short form in…

Some Thoughts:

1. Apex Legends is the best fun I’ve had since Mass Effect. I’m starting to get halfway decent too.
2. Football game tomorrow morning is starting to feel more and more like an impending slaughter. Once we have the full squad and the backup RB gets to actually be a backup, we have a lot of possibility.
3. Gotta remember to walk that fine line of enjoying the sport and not immersing myself in the nonsense. So easy to tip towards crazy.
4. Speaking of crazy: Trump. There is a blog a coming. A big one. An honest one.
5. Apple pulled back its pitch to make an aircharger (Qi style) only a few days after making the pitch. It seems they realized too late that they could not make that specific tech proprietary… yet. Mark my words, they will modify their batteries to only work with their air chargers.
6. Yet I still rock mac.
7. So much so that my partner now is a mac lover.
8. The thing about partners is that you never realize how much you appreciate them until they make you think about the things you haven’t. That is reason 89 I love my partner.

I wear far fewer hats than I generally wear, but I still have on quite a few. I’m a dad and under that are the subheaders: Track Coach, Football Coach. Neither subheaders are full time and are instead squeezed into the days where I have my kids and the days I don’t have them but there is a track meet somewhere out in the ether.

I am wearing the teacher hat. I should say professor, but I remain separate from any real sense of hierarchy there. I’m about the students and the teaching, so teacher it is. That piece takes up the most time, because grading sucks and is plentiful. That part of the job takes up so much of my time that I have been limited in how much new material I can produce. I long for a semester where I just build cool classes for students. In fact, I want to make a scaleable shell that easily and quickly allows me to put in new and current information/events in a modular fashion. I want to do that, but the when is a heavy question, because of another hat I wear.

I am a writer. I have reached the point where I’m putting down 1000 words a day as a bare minimum. I recently completed a dirty draft of a novella in 27 days. I call it dirty because it is little more than the bare bones work of the draft that needs the care and attention of a second run. I’ve already started that work and plan to complete that in the next 30 days. Then the final 30 is polish and print. Hopefully I can get it to my editor in a realistic time frame and then its out for the world to see.

Writer is the second most enjoyable role in my life. The first is being a partner to the future Mrs. Talislegger (proposal pending). I’ve been slacking in this one in many ways by letting the others get in the way and by being uncertain in my actions. That has to change. Happiness starts at home.

So, there I was in pursuit of the perfect Madden 19 season. I’d had a perfect season before, but that involved a spectacular assortment of players built up off of a team where three of the players were named after my kids and entirely made up. This time there were no fabricated characters. I’d built a dream team through drafts and trades and free agent signings. I had the squad. They were lead by a rookie QB who’d helped them amass a record number of points. The team averaged 50 a game. They destroyed everyone–included the hated Jets. We were in the conference finals against a Chargers team that was 8-7-1, with 1 of the losses coming against this very team!

We lost.

We only scored 7.

No, nobody was hurt. I just crapped the bed.

So, that is what happened. I lost a Madden game. I wasted a perfect season. The next day I was in class doing six word memoirs with my students and one wrote, Take the L and keep moving. How timely was that? See, games are life writ small. We have the opportunity to experience all of the happiness and shame and glory and pain of a long form situation in a few hours. When it goes well we rejoice. When it goes badly we feel the pain and move on. I love that about games.

It isn’t the same for sports. I have to wait a year to see the Cyclones have another shot at March Madness. I have to wait months to see if the Giants somehow recover from that massive loss of talent. Waiting is the hardest part.

That is why we game.

I stumbled across an interview in a fairly prestigious undergraduate research journal. I was the subject of the interview–specific to the work I was doing at the time. I didn’t remember the interview. I don’t remember half the stuff I do and this includes published (even award winning) writing. That is because I don’t do it for the lasting accolades. I do it for the feeling of being done and for getting the words out of my system and into the world. I might be in it for the words. Still, in this world it is vital to remember your accolades and flex your might from time to time just to remind the people around you that you actually do stuff.

I am not good at showing people that I am good. I am not focused on that kind of life. I often wonder if, when I leave this present job, I will be able to find another, because I have done little to express to the world that I am good at anything at all. I don’t preserve proof. Heck, I don’t remember proof and that is a problem that is only going to change due to a change in career or thinking.

This is not a good thing. I work in academia where the people around me toot their horns on a fairly regular occasion. I don’t toot and I am not really a part of the social fabric of the organization, so I appear as dead weight buoyed only by the fact that my students often come back for more classes. You cannot hate too hard on the guy who is pulling down solid Full Time Student Enrollment. But you can treat him like an outsider and dead weight.

Some Thoughts:

1. Life is … goofy.

As a novelist I find that everything I write works better when it exists on the faintly drawn lines of an outline. I don’t ever treat an outline as a rulebook, but instead an idea of an idea; the thought of what I want to achieve on a chapter by chapter basis that affords me the space to create and the guide to stay relatively on task. My life has no such line. It certainly ought to. As it stands I find myself aimless for entire days. While the issue of depression certainly factors into all of this the core situation circumstance is in fact not having a plan. 

So, what does a life plan look like? I am in no real position to even know. My partner has a two year plan and likely longer range models. I’ve not seen this plan (draw conclusions as you will, but I will not). I have not developed my own plan beyond the economic hopes and dreams of 2021. I do know that I don’t even approach a daily plan short of the laundry list of chores and classes that needs to get done.

I function better when I have lists. Those lists are basically the kernel sentence of any functional life plan. Perhaps I ought to be thinking about what I want life to look like in the coming days, months, and even years and stop staring at each day as though it is the only one that matters and what matters in that sole day is finding moments of peace and joy. When written into existence it doesn’t sound like a bad plan. However, I live a far more complex life than that, and I need more out of, well, everything as a result.

I am writing this blog –from bed–as a morning confessional of sorts. To begin it is nearly 9:30 and I am in bed. This is abnormal behavior for me, but I didn’t actually fall asleep until sometime after 3:30 AM. That suggests that, despite the late wake up, I still have not had a complete night’s sleep. This is troubling for a number of reasons. Primarily it appears to factor into what can only be described as my continuing battle with depression.

I’ve struggled with understanding depression as much as I have struggled with admitting it. I realize that there are several factors at play in that struggle and that all are specifically my doing. In this I have practiced several self-destructive behaviors including (but not limited to) poor eating habits, poor sleeping habits, outbursts, rampant laziness, occasional lapses in proper hygiene, and destructive relationship habits. At times it feels like I am punishing myself. At other times it feels like this level of ineptitude is the most I am capable of achieving. Presently, I feel like a failure every day. Even the thought of getting up and doing a single push up seems like too much. On the one hand the act seems frivolous and pointless. On the other hand it feels like I do not deserve to be physically fit because of all the pain I have caused others and because of the failures in my own life.

I have always felt responsible for everything around me. When things go wrong I feel like it is me who dropped the ball. Often I am right (if only in my own mind but sometimes it is not in my mind. sometimes –most times–it really is me). I am aware that I’ve birthed an awful level of anxiety in my partner that doesn’t show any signs of slowing. Quite the opposite in fact. How could one not sense a growing anxiousness when associated with me in my present state?

The thing is this: I realize that all of this can be changed/fixed easily. I recognize that all it takes is me changing. All it takes is doing one small thing, then the next, then the next. However, that is the power of depression. I am dogged at each step by the utter weight of realizing how many steps there are to take and how enormous the failure will be at each step. It is for that reason that not one step is even taken. A body at rest tends to stay a mess. A body in motion seems a distant shore.

So epically drained this evening. The writing as… gone. not terribly well but it feels good to be about done with the new words and able to blissfully slip into the shadows of sleep. I’m not all together here right now even, so I think the best I can really put together for the blog are

Some Thoughts:

1. still waking up and checking CNN and NFL first thing in the morning. Lately I throw in a gam or two of tetris to sharpen the mind.
2. Cats sleep a lot of the day away. My eldest has a cat that will vanish for hours only to be spotted somewhere curled up in a ball sleeping.
3. Getting back to football, there is a strong racial component at play as a of late in regards to wide recievers. The white wideout phenomena feels a great deal like the ‘white chocolate’ mantra of not too long ago in basketball. lets see where this goes.
4. Slow typing seems to be a basic part of having no juice at night. I’m about done here time wise.

Well, I finished the draft. 27,000 new words in 27 days. We are ready to move into the revision and clean up phase of the work, with the promise of more words in some places and less in others. I gotta admit, I limped through the finish line. I was totally exhausted the last two nights writing this. I do much better in the midday.

It feels good to be done with the draft. I am nervous about not having something to write tomorrow, but I will figure that out when it comes. I need to devote a solid chunk of time and energy towards that goal tomorrow. Heck, just writing that out represents a change of energy and lifestyle focus towards writing.

I’m happy in the most basic sense. If I am looking at the moment in a bubble then it is a wonderful sense of accomplishment and i feel good about it and myself. That feeling is worth all the words.

Some Thoughts:

1. Now if I could just get back to being a better friend….
2. And lover…
3. Big shout to my facebook folks for donating to my son’s fun run. Unexpected and totally appreciated.
4. First night sitting in with the football team. Two of the boys are playing together. I’m very rusty in terms of on-field understanding. Still, it was super fun to be out there. Looking forward to game one tomorrow.
5. Iowa State lost. My bracket is totally wrecked.

I have tonight and then tomorrow before I’m done with the initial draft of the novella. 1000 words a day for the last 26 days (as of today) and chapter 27 wraps things up. I still need to fire out 1000 new words every day, so tomorrow I am working in more time to outline a new story or at least make it so I have a few scenes in mind to jot down a thousand words about each day. This habit forming stuff is hard work. It is the difficult and important writing work I’ve always imagined myself doing, and for that I am grateful. This modification/expansion of my process is teaching me about my process. I am learning what works for me as a writer and what ought to be culled.

One thing I have learned over the years is that I really need background sound. I cannot use music unless in public, because the white noise of the crowd counteracts the music to create something which can be entirely overlooked. ASMR is one way to go with this, and I have tried that several times. The overt sexuality of most ASMR channels is a turn off. Therefore I generally turn on rain sounds and use those as a method to keep the head fully into the situation.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m constantly amazed at how sports writers can make a living relying on their entirely flawed certainty and the willingness of fans to keep believing them or at least click through. I clicked through (well, I guess right there is how it works) an NFL.com mock draft and was shocked to see… no I wasn’t shocked. It was more nonsense based on the ideas they already had about how the universe works. Basically, an exercise in self-fulfilling prophecy bolstered by rumor and poor interpretation of motivations and facts.
2. Still playing Madden and learning the ways of Moneyball with the GM/Owner features of said game. Super fun.