Psuedo Control

What are you feeling right now? Are you having gazillion thoughts in your mind? Most of them leading to a worry? Don't worry you're only one of the 7.4999999 billion people experiencing the same right now. The problem with us humans is that we are unsatiated and unappreciative species inundated with thoughts. Somehow the animal’s instincts in us are always on! We are always looking for more! More food, more money, more sex, more people around us, more cars etc. But why don't we get satisfied? Why? One of the most important factors driving humans of course is boredom (which I happen to recently seen confirmed in a video by vsauce). But apart from boredom what else could we be looking at? What could cause this insatiable behavior?

Oh and yes did I tell you that because of this habit of not getting satisfied, we are eating more and more (much more than we should) and hence the obesity epidemic? It seems as if humans are just terrible at controlling the self. What an irony life is, humans necessitate the desire to control everything yet the thing they have the least control over is themselves! 

Insecurities deeply embedded in our system drive us to see everything with a sense of (albeit acute) insecurity. I Wonder if in some ideal utopian world, if an individual was not insecure, would they want control of anything at all? And If they would not then would it be a better world to live in rather than one where everything is relentlessly controlled? Even at the level of the mind, one wants to control it because of the insecurities that a spirited mind if let free, it would most certainly wander towards basic animalistic desires of life. Isn’t this what the monks practicing Buddhism do? Trying to control and relinquish the desires of the mind.

The relationship between control and insecurities i feel is highly complex, it could either be a linear or an inverse exponential relationship. As the insecurities rise, the need for control increases linearly. But as the level of control gets more and more, the insecurities increase to such a level that they start to saturate (plateau). Can you feel the tremendous weight of such a situation? Now imagine living at such a level of insecurities and trying to vehement control. The bubble has to burst at one point due to the pressure! 

Looking at it from an evolutionary point of view, sense of control brings good chances of survival, for example someone having more control of the environment statistically speaking survives longer (from someone who has no control over the environment, like a terminally ill patient). Hence the subconscious self, gives us a boost of biochemical further strengthening the idea of control and its survival effects (see the feedback loop here?).

So what in the end it all comes down to is not necessarily having control but rather a sense of it (that’s what i call Pseudo control). Whenever someone is in a situation of uncertainty, they are always advised to believe everything will be fine with time. This is nothing but supporting the idea of providing a sense of control when none actual control exists (the future will always still be unpredictable). One does not need to have absolute control but rather only a sense of it. 

One can observe it in many walks of life. For instance whenever you visit a doctor, all you are doing is seeking a sense of control from someone who you think has it more than you do in that particular scenario. Whenever we look for advice/help we are always transferring the weight of providing us the sense of control via them. 

Rules for example are built for this reason. When everyone around in a social structure follows rules, it gives everyone (specially the state) a sense of control on our surroundings. That everything is smooth, and hence higher this sense the higher is the quality of life (example in Scandinavian countries this would be the highest). 

Since humans are risk averse species (according to the Nobel Prize winning genius Daniel Kahneman), then this sense of control has to reduce the risk for humans. The more control they have, the less risky the world is for them! This further strengthens our belief system as it increases the chances of survival (speaking in evolutionary terms). 

The idea of believing in god and the whole concept of it also revolves around the sense of control if once delves in a bit deeper. Imagine that people who pray or believe that God will make everything alright (by that i mean turn the tables in their own favor) are the people who via faith (passed on via brainwashing) believe that there is a higher power with CONTROL over everything that by praying to that power, one could guide the system in their favor. 

When people are provided choice, they feel they are exercising control over the environment. But have you ever wondered why a good salesman (whether it be an individual, a capitalistic group of people, or even governments) might give you a limited set of choices to make you believe you have control (only a sense of it of course!). For example, the salesman might ask you whether you want the 'left' one or the ' right' one when he has already assumed that you will be buying one of them for sure. The same happens in elections worldwide.

Finally, if an intelligent alien were to drop to earth right at this moment, it would be fairly easy for it to take over humanity: All it has to do is to provide humans a sense of security that everything is under their control (Albeit pseudo). And just when the humans are convinced, then reverse the cycle and use them for its own purpose! Boom easy kaneasy..

So stop trying to control everything and enjoying the freedom. We cannot control everything but we can make ourselves be less affected by the outcome of certain unpredictable completely random events. This i know might not be realistic but it might get you out of the continuous cycle of control and anxiousness. And as John Keynes once famously said: ' in the long run we are all dead anyways' 

Till next time!

Perception of time

One night while driving back home from work I suddenly saw a car that had broken down and lay in the middle of the road without any tail lights on. I was considerably fast and didn’t notice it. Then, suddenly I realized that everything around me seemed to have gone out of focus and my brain only emphasized on the stationary car and the road which became my center of focus. Then, as if magically (almost subconsciously) I maneuvered my car slightly towards left and missed a dreadful collision. In hindsight I can still remember extremely vividly the event taking place in slow motion, As if I were in a movie which had slowed down and the protagonist now had enough time to doge a bullet (somebody like Neo). Now why events like this one in hindsight seem to last longer than it actually did? I did some rough calculations and the time for the sensor signals to reach the brain and back to the motor nerves to react for maneuvering was not more than 300 Milli second! Yet the whole event seemed to have taken forever (relatively speaking). Time seemed to have slowed down for me somehow, or so it seemed to at least in hindsight. I still remember everything in great detail. How is it possible? How can we suddenly from autopilot go into this ninja mode where we perceive things at slow motion? OR DO WE? 

We all have watches around that tell us that time is ticking forward steadily and predictably, whereas our experiences tell us it is anything but. Time or perception of time can be compressed and stretched likes a bubble gum. Time, my friends is indeed warped!

For example, the next time you have a fever, try this experiment: Count till 60 seconds without a watch and when you think its time, shout out loud! At the same time, have someone sitting next to you with a stopwatch measuring exactly 60 seconds, you will be bewildered that your estimate will be consistently shorter ( ~ 45 seconds). The higher your temperature the lower will be the estimate, somehow your mind speeds up your perception of time as your heart rate increases. Like a racing engine, the hotter it is the faster it goes (Well almost every engine except Fiat!).

Like any other scientific finding, this one too raises further question. Namely: do animals that have a faster heartbeat, like mice perceive time faster than us? What about hummingbirds and Honey bees? Do they see the world in slow motion compared to us? Ever wondered why you always miss a hitting a fly with a swatter? Maybe it perceives time faster than you do!

But the million dollar question here is: what are the neural mechanisms of time perception? Interestingly unlike other senses: touch, taste, smell and hear, there is no one single region dedicated to the sense of time, it seems to be meta sensory. Isn’t that incredible? It is nowhere yet everywhere…

Do you know that you have the ability to both; slow down or enhance the speed of time yourself?
Prof. David Eagleman put people in situations where they could slow their time. He placed participants 15 stories above the ground and hung them using a rope, later he released them from there to perceive a feeling of free fall/weightlessness for 3 or more seconds before they landed safely ( in a net). The interesting bit here was that asked the participants to report the time they were in free fall and the participants always overestimated. Seeing things in slow motion and high detail. The duration of the event does not change but the event seems to have taken longer only in RETROSPECT!
Then might it have something to do with the memory of the event? Because your memories are more densely packed you seem to recall them in high detail.

This is the most marvelous and mind blowing link here, the one between Time and Memory! Time to your brain it turns out is nothing but the detail with which you register a memory. During critical situations, the region of the brain called amygdala kicks in and forges the memory in a very high detail (In the hippocampus) and makes them stick together. And since emotional memories are much stronger than normal memories, upon replay of these events the high detail memories might make the event seem to last longer. Hence, the more detailed a memory the longer the event seems to have lasted! So when you take drugs like psilocybin the sense of time is reduced because you are processing much more information than normal conditions. The amount of dopamine in the brain shoots up and you lose the sense of time. Mostly it slows down!

Ever wondered why vacation feels like it whizzed pass very early, but seems to last longer in hindsight? this contradictory feeling is termed as ‘holiday paradox’. That is because we perceive time prospectively and retrospectively. They are usually in sync during our daily lives, of waking up, working, sleeping and weekends. But on vacations the stimulus from sights, experiences etc. brings a sense of novelty and leads to misalign of the two warping the perceived time.

All of that is ok, But I am sure that like me all the people out there feel as if the time is passing very fast as we age. It also seems to be moving slower while we were kids. According to one of the hypothesis that is because as one grows older, one gathers more and more memories and many of them are not in high detail and are hence compressed representations of events. So when you recall these memories, they are somewhat depleted, giving a faster representation of time! (it is faster to go through a thinner book than a thick one). One of the most important things for a brain is energy, brains are always predicting things using approximation and previous knowledge so in the end if you have used more energy that replicates to using more neural activity it seems to be lasting longer. And that is exactly what happens when you’re in a fearful situation. The interesting thing to ask here is there a control center for this? if yes, then where and what type of neurons or activity of neurons corresponds to such a behavior.

The next obvious question on might ask is, are there any diseases which might be linked to an error in the perception of time in the brain? According to this enthralling hypothesis by one scientist, yes there are! Schizophrenia for example is described as the disease of hearing voices in the brain, or having someone in your brain that is not you. Now imagine if that person was actually you but in the past. This is called ‘misattribution of credit’ for example you say I moved my leg but it wasn’t me. This is because of the brain signal being perceived later than it actually occurred. These two things are not in sync which makes you misattribute the signal as not your own doing. It is also noticed that these people have abnormal levels of dopamine. This causes them to Miss Judge the duration of an event when measured via other experiments.

Another related psychological phenomenon is that of being in the zone or in a state of flow. For example the book ‘drive’ the author argues that we seem to lose track of time when we are doing something with a lot of concentration, hours seems to be like minutes which actually makes us slow time down. Different types of music have the same effect. BPM (beats per minute) decide if you will perceive time faster or slower. The perception of time in the brain is distortable and can be manipulated by music.

So how can you slow time down as you grow? Here are my two cents:

Do new things, have new experiences, if you never tried an instrument do it, take a new path to work today, change the settings of your room, it is known that our brain has maps for things we do very often and they get strengthened as we do them regularly. After a while they become a part of our automatic system. That’s when you lose track of time. It’s like driving home automatically without even consciously realizing it. Music is one big factor too. Just like listening to vivaldi (or pink floyd) will slower your perception of time, listening to Nirvana will make it faster.

Since memories are a guide to our perception of time, having new memories in a shorter time will help us in perceiving that the time has gone by much slowly. A weekend for example with multiple new activities but each one having enough detail for example painting a wall, photographing etc. Surprising yourself with new things keeps your brain engaged, and uses more energy, new connection are forged. Attention is the key here. So either that or you travel near the speed of light where you will be moving so fast that you will experiences everything around you still and not moving at all. Moreover, Novelty seem to have a very strong impact on memory. You are more likely to remember things that are distinctive and vivid, and personally involving (Like a vacation! like travelling to space also is known to decrease the perception of time). 

Meditate often! Meditation combined with deep breathing has been shown to be lowering the heart rate which further decreases the amount of activity in the brain and makes you feel lighter. In certain deep modes of meditation one can even completely lose track of time. But the key is to let go. Have a timer or alarm to bring you back but quieten your surroundings and go deep within your mind.

Einstein once famously said: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

Time indeed is relative and is immortal; it appeared with the beginning of the universe and will remain till its end. We all are bound by time. It’s the only thing that never stops, is never the same and always moves in a single direction. Time is baffling and that’s what makes it so much fun to study. So the next time you’re feeling the time is passing by too fast, stop, and do something novel. It is famously said in the Vedas: the ones who do not learn to change with time, time changes them.

Stay Curious!
Stay Inspired!

J

Focus and its virtues

Sitting here on my chair and listening to the most peaceful yet immensely emotionally stimulating piano, I cannot help but wonder how incredible is the power of focus in life. When we are young, we are taught to perform every task with focus and complete engrossment. But as we age we realize that this is easier said than done. In today’s world we are bombarded with information from all around us, targeting each and every sense of ours. We have something called an pseudo-information overload. Going back at 50,000 years, we were hunter gatherers living in no more than few people per clan. The means of entertainment were scant and what we had was other humans, some form of art in cave paintings and campfires. The main mode of entertainment was storytelling and cooking, combined with some forms of ritual dances around the fire. In order for our species to survive and be so dominant that it is today was due to this main fact that we were always social creatures and these rituals increased our dependency on being one.

Fast forward to the 21^st century and we see that the species has spread on all lands, water, air and even slowly entering the territory of space. Yet how we are so lonely from deep inside. Numerically we are plentiful yet somehow when it comes to some social interaction we are all limited to the virtual social world (the era of facebook, whatsapp etc). Observing the fact that we are all so lonely, we must be achieving great progress in our professional lives, as recapitulating from school times, we were insistently instructed to have focus in life. And now since we have so less distraction we must be very productive. Except we are not! Ever wondered why?

In the world of constant notifications from friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and countless other people we might be not connected in real terms but virtually, we are always occupied. And if that was not enough we have The INTERNET (bringer of all evil in cute animals videos and gossip, reality tv shows and entertainment) we are always one click away, one browse away from everything that is currently happening in the world that might or might not affect us directly. We are so hooked up on it that like a heroin addict we need constant shots of the drug releasing dopamine in the brain which further fuels the stress hormones which the life brings that keeps us going on and thus creating a feedback loop.  

This is the current source of my fret and curiosity. Einstein once said: I am not a genius, but I stay with problems longer than normal people. Whenever I am stuck in a problem, whether that is related to programming or requires some logic based careful evaluation, I always remember this phrase from him. That how if we ever wish to truly make a difference, we sometimes need to stop all the vexing notifications and think hard and deep about the task at hand.

Countless studies have proven that people who are excellent at what they do and have made a name for themselves doing that like concert pianists, singers, programmers, athletes, writers, etc  had at some point in their lives to be focused at the task at hand with utmost determination without any kind of distraction. The secret to greatness is not just talent but rather an incessant trial and error combined with a fierce focus. It is that mental asset which rarely gets so much limelight in today’s world when it comes to measuring the variables of excellence.

It is easy to say that when we have so many devices or sources of distraction around us. One powerful tool that helps to achieve such a state is meditation and/or music. Meditation is the way of emptying one’s thoughts to bare minimal and at best none.  However counter intuitive it might sound in the beginning it is indeed the best way to calm down all the anxiousness and our working memory to focus on the important things in life. Music can too provide a way of reducing anxiety and flushing out unnecessary thoughts. Both in some way or the other help the mind relax, reduce the levels of stress hromones in our blood, and helps drive the attention on tasks with higher relevance. For example, if one wanted to learn a new language, dance form, musical instrument or even wanted to do something for a loved one. 

Some form of meditation not only helps to be more attentive but also works as a form of compassion driver (which we can really use a lot in today’s world but another post about it some other time). We all have the desire to stay connected to the world and be aware of our surroundings constantly. But it is necessary to slow down, take a step back and ask ourselves, do I really want to know about this? How does this affect my current state of being, am I looking for small shots of dopamine and losing out on the task that is at hand? Is there something important that I could be doing instead of this? Now I know asking all these questions is easy. Sometimes we even have an answer and still continue to do the same chores. The problem then is of effort and motivation and not understanding, which is another topic of discussion and is beyond the scope of this article. For now I will leave you will this thought and a quote from Blaise Pascal:

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”