adam georgiou's blog

• 1 min read

Who I'm Looking For

…but not just any girl.

Find one who’s idealistic,
fun loving, 
generous with her smile and laugh.

A girl who’s adventurous,
and contemplative, and curious.

A girl who knows how to be a lady
and a child and a man, too.

A girl who’s smart and knows about
some of the things I know about and
some of the things I don’t.

A girl who dances, because she needs to.

A girl who remembers how to imagine,
so she can remind me when I forget.

(Do the same for her.)

A girl whose heart explodes to a
complementary rhythm.

One who craves music and movement,
and people to share with.

But also, a girl with gumption.

A girl with self-respect,
and self-control,
and self-image.

A girl who knows when it’s time to be real.

A girl who knows nothing is permanent,
and tries not to take things for granted.

A girl who works hard and for a reason.

A girl who has a reason.

Is that who you’ve found? Is it who you’re looking for?

• 1 min read

Cynic's Antidote

Just got back from the Mountain Jam and Bonnaroo music festivals, and I’m so happy.

I was thinking today after work, about how fun it was running around on Hunter Mountain in the rain and the Bonnaroo farm in the heat, and also how almost all of the people I met were so loving to me and similarly interested in the things I liked. The daydream continued throughout my walk to the train and I had a bit of a personal revelation:

If you’re attracted to someone – anyone – then “the everybody” can’t be bad. And if you can think that everybody is even partly good, then who knows just exactly how good it is. Everybody could be all good, practically speaking. And that potential is so enlightening and up lifting. Knowing that makes the act of attraction, good in and of itself.

Anytime, even a brief instant, spent with a person (or people) that you really dig is time well spent. That instant is all the medicine you need to keep yourself inoculated against cynicism and open to the wonderfulness of life.

And if all you get is that one instant, and you never get to follow through on that attraction with anyone or any group, don’t worry – you’ve still won the cosmic lotto. Simply getting to experience anything at all is incredibly rare, and you’ve managed to experience something good!

But if you find yourself continuously in situations where you’re attracted to people, then lucky you – all the better.

And if, over and over again, you find yourself in those situations with the same people, then congratulations – you’ve found your family!

And if you’re there repeatedly with the same one person, then consider yourself absolutely blessed, because you’ve found love and that person is your wife.

In the end I just want to say thank you, family; you know who you are, and I love you all. And to all the others who happen to be reading this:  whether you’ve got your own family already or not, know you’re always welcome to join mine.

• 1 min read

(Untitled)

All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t=0.

A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

• 1 min read

It's Raining in Love by Richard Braughtigan

I don’t know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
    a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right things
or perhaps I start
  to examine,
                     evaluate,
                                    compute
  what I am saying.

If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and she says, “I don’t know,”
I start thinking:    Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
   with someone
than it is to be in love with them.”

I think he’s right and besides,
it’s raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
   That’s all taken care of.

              BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
And suddenly beings asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like, 
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,” 
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think:   Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
    instead of me.

• 1 min read

I hope I never get so wise that the seasons are no longer a surprise.

I love how no matter how many times I go through it, it’s always new.

Not needing a jacket to go outside.

That sweet heat smell that goes hand in hand with spring and summer.

Trees being green.

Thinking the ski season is, sadly, done forever.

Watching the beach slowly become inviting. Remembering how much I love swimming, and surfing, and flying my kite; and thinking about how it’s been practically infinite time since I last did.

It never getting dark.

God, it’s all so awesome.

A similar thing happens going into winter, too, and in either case the transition is one of my favorite parts of being alive.

• 1 min read

A Defense of Literature

The universe is huge. Time is impossibly vast. Trillions of creatures crawl and swim and fly through our planet. Billions of people live, billions came before us, and billions will come after. We cannot count, cannot even properly imagine, the number of perspectives and variety of experiences offered by existence.

We sip all of this richness through the very narrowest of straws: one lifetime, one consciousness, one perspective, one set of experiences. Of all the universe has, has had, and will have to offer, we can know only the tiniest fraction. We are alone and minuscule and our lives are over in a blink.

All of this strikes me as terribly sad, and if I believed Someone were in charge, I could muster an argument that our awareness of vastness makes our tininess unfair.

But here’s the thing. Literature lets us experience life through a second consciousness. For a time we share the perspective and experience of the author and his imagination. Our experience of the universe is broadened, multiplied.

Without literature, we are all limited to our own lives. With it, we can know something of what it is to be other people, to walk in their shoes, to see the world their way.

Literature needs no further defense than this, I would say. It is our species’s most advanced and successful technology for cheating dismal fate out of the abstract aloneness it would otherwise impose on us.

-A Comment by OnlyFooling

• 5 min read

Faith In The World

I’m in the process of reading “Style; Lessons in Clarity and Grace”. It’s a book about how to create good prose, focusing on a set of tips that tend to produce rich and impactful writing, and by providing examples that illustrate each point. Some of those examples are obviously crafted for the purpose of demonstrating the author’s ideas, but others were taken from already existing and excellent pieces of literature.

One such quote was not only a masterpiece of English, but also contained a powerful, thought-provoking idea.

The passage was originally from the author Frederick Jackson Turner’s “The Frontier in American History” and is as follows:

This then is the heritage of the pioneer experience – a passionate belief that a democracy was possible which should leave the individual a part to play in a free society and not make him a cog in a machine operated from above; which trusted in the common man, in his tolerance, his ability to adjust differences with good humor, and to work out an American type from the contributions of all nations – a type for which he would fight against those who challenged it in arms, and for which in time of war he would make sacrifices, even the temporary sacrifice of his individual freedom and his life, lest that freedom be lost forever.

When I read that, I got hit with a flood of resonance, the reasons for which are so many I don’t even know where to start!

Firstly, my ideals sit so flush with Fredrick’s described pioneer. I want great things to happen to me and to the people of my communities, from the small scale of my immediate family, all the way up to that of my country and beyond. And I believe that this greatness is a function of individual progress and well-being.

But that’s just me being excited about life. I want to go to California and to Colorado and to Alaska (and SCUBA diving, too)! And I want everyone I do and do not know to be happy. The only play I can run is to try and make all happen one step at a time.

However, the passage also contained another more intricate and interesting idea; one that had much broader implications. The idea that this country’s greatness – America’s greatness – was founded in trust of the common man; for him to be tolerant, lightheartedly compromising, dynamically principled, and above all, immovable from this basis.

This country was founded on faith in people.

And I believe its fall will be the fault of loosing this faith. But it hasn’t fallen yet, and it doesn’t have to.

A while back my buddy Charlie and I had a talk about a mutual habit of ours. In conversation, we would use the word “everybody” when describing our views of the world. Saying things like, “everybody thinks this” and “everybody does this”, but “we are different, because we do this and we think that”. After years of this type of talk, a mutual friend pointed out that we were being idiots. The abstract everybody that Charlie and I used in conversation wasn’t actually describing the world, it was a tunnel-visioned lens, focused on the people we had happened to be in front of us at the time. Everybody was a illusion we used to unwittingly bootstrap cynical attitudes, even if the actual evidence didn’t support it.

We’d go surfing and some stranger would get angry about one of us accidentally getting in their way. Now everybody in the water was being selfish, looking out for number-one, while we were the only ones there trying to have fun. Why can’t everybody be like us? (Never mind the forty-something other people all around us who hadn’t gotten angry.)

We’d go to the bar and look around at superficial people judging other superficial people. Why can’t everyone just dance, be open and friendly, like us? (As we simultaneously judged everyone else in the building and ignored those singing and laughing.)

We’d go to the beach to kitesurf and get yelled at by a local birdwatcher who thought we were disturbing his passion’s limited habitat. Why can’t everyone just be stoked like us…

But that’s the thing: the majority of the other people in the water were having fun, most of the other people in the bar were smiling, and the birdman was stoked. He was stoked on birds. We were stoked on kites. The common thread: we all need to get along.

There’s this tendency for us to divide the world into us and them, and it’s not doing anyone any good. The news makes this even worse, because it takes the actions of a few thousand people – the people and groups being reported on – and provides it to the general public as brick and mortar for the building of more false everybodys.

Its not their fault, it’s an artifact of system we built for ourselves.

But on the other hand, at this very moment the next layer of that system is being constructed around us. Social media – be it the internet or some good old spoken word-of-mouth – can go either way. Social media is a catalyst. If you propagate the perceived sense of division, you provide more brick and mortar. But if instead, you try to be tolerant, compromising, and principled and do all of this with “good humor”, you build a sense of mutualness and cooperation for yourself and those who follow what you do (or post).

I believe that most of us are good-natured. Most of us don’t want to shoot up schools, or fly planes into buildings, or protest soldier’s funerals. Most of us don’t want to kill, hurt, or sadden anyone. So let’s stop arguing about those bad people who do! Let’s go even further, let’s stop talking about them all together. It’s not those few bad people that are hurting our country in the long run, it’s the fuck-you-you’re-wrong attitude we direct toward one another when discussing those bad people!

So instead of continuing that conversation, lets do something else. Lets be tolerant of each other's beliefs – conservative and liberal alike; lets lightheartedly compromise about local policy that concerns topics which we actually have the expertise to discuss; and lets build righteous value systems metered on the results of responsible experimentation.

And when the time comes that someone outside of our community threatens to take all of that away, let’s stand our ground and defend it. But right now, isn’t that time. Right now, the only real threat to America is Americans.

See someone who doesn’t believe in gay marriage?
Help them with their groceries.

See someone who’s gay?
Help them with their groceries.

Think it's ridiculous that someone could be one way for regulating guns but hold the opposite view when it comes to regulating abortion? Take the time you would’ve spent triple-reposting that witty politically themed meme on your Facebook page, and go help someone with their proverbial groceries. 


We need less time spent in the circle-jerk of people who already agree with us, and more time spent bridging the gap between the two factions, be it at the diner table, walking down the street, or on the internet…

• 2 min read

Note to Self.

If you’re constantly looking at yourself in the mirror, expecting some change in appearance to produce a change in confidence, then you’re indirectly associating appearance with excellence. Excellence — whether it’s physical, conversational, sexual, or otherwise — is not correlated to appearance. This is my conflict, because I’ve always been self-conscious of my appearance (I struggle with weight), yet at the same time hold it in such low rank among what I consider to be indicative of awesomeness.

Beyond the cliché undertone of such a claim, I’ve proved this to myself time and time again, yet the conflict remains. It remains because I have yet to internalize the effects of such a claim, with respect to myself. I can intuitively understand that appearance is not what makes other people awesome or lame, but I have trouble accepting the fact that I have to be included in this rule; if the rule is going to be any good, it has to be generic and applicable to all.

If awesome people can and do come in all forms, then I can be excellent or lack excellence regardless of what form I am in. The people who I have considered to be high quality in the past are the ones who have motivated themselves to do the scariest shit, or explore the deepest part of their minds, or ask the hard questions, or try the kinkiest thing in bed (or elsewhere…). The people I’ve felt lacked quality are the ones who don’t try for excellence, who sit discontent with their choices, and who make excuses for their laziness without making an effort to combat it. If these observations are what I believe (and they are), then I can only conclude that excellence is a product of doing the right things, and should focus on doing those things myself rather than worry over or feel proud about how I look at any given moment.

This is the fastest way to relate to the people I want to be connected with.

And it’s also sustainable.

When you start correlating things with appearance, it’s easy to let excellence be a cyclically fleeting characteristic. You get fit, you stop exercising because your appearance is (naively) indicative of quality, you get fat, you lose quality, you repeat.

Appearance isn’t why running is important.

Running is not about doing something that’s going to make you look better, it’s about doing something that’s hard and requires internal drive. Keep running, and you demonstrate motivation, which is to say you demonstrate excellence; any change in appearance is a byproduct.

• 1 min read

Thought or Emotion; Which Comes First?

I’m having trouble telling if emotions precede or follow events, when those events are things you’re remembering or anticipating – in other words, thinking about the past or the future. For stuff that’s happening now, it seems pretty obvious that emotions follow the events. For example, you land a new trick, you feel good; you don’t follow through on something, you feel bad. But for things that have already happened or for things you’re expecting to happen, it seems to me to be more of a “chicken and the egg” type problem.

Do you rehash old painful memories because your brain is in a funky state? Maybe you’re hungry, in caffeine withdrawal, lacking sleep, or in need of some exercise, all of which make you feel some version of “down”. And perhaps if that’s the case your more likely to remember “down” experiences.

Or do those “down” memories surface because they are particularly painful? existing even if not the moment wasn’t directly relevant, yet affecting your emotions anyway. I’m suspicious of this explanation, yet at the same time, the consistency between the thoughts that tend to pop up – in other words, the fact that I seem to have the same set of memories come back in a single period of feeling like shit – makes it seem more plausible that thoughts are responsible.

Also, perhaps it’s not so black and white. Maybe it’s more of a feedback loop, where either case can be the trigger, but afterward both work together to keep the feeling going, until some other piece of the universe lines up to break the cycle and push you in the opposite direction.

Wondering…

• 3 min read

Jack White.

Jack White is an interesting fellow. I've never met him, but I've seen him. He got me thinking… among other things.

I got the chance to see one of his shows this past Sunday, and initially wasn’t too stoked on it. I had had a long night the night prior, seeing Neil Young, The Black Keys, and The Foo Fighters tear it down in Central Park — life is rough, what can I say.

Anyway, I got the call from a friend that he had the extra Jack White tickets, and I had always wanted to see him; I mulled on it for a while, called a few people, and eventually convinced myself to do it. We get there, and right off the bat I’m stoked — one of those awesome takes-you-by-surprise stokes, that you don’t expect to get because of whatever reason you were initially hesitant. It happens to me with surfing and skiing all the time, but that’s another story. This kind of stoked is the best, and it’s funny how they nearly always happen when I’m apprehensive to do something at first.

Back to the point. This was the second night of a two night show, and apparently the night prior, Mr. White pulled some nonsense stunt on stage. According to the internet, around 40 minutes into his set he said, “What is this, an NPR convention!?” and a few minutes later left the stage for the night. The crowd was irate and rioted outside the theater — again, according to the internet. There’s not a lot of concrete information floating around, but based on the comment Jack made, it would seem he wasn’t happy with the crowd.

I’ve written about the relationship between the crowd and the artist before. In my opinion, and from my perspective as a member of the crowd, it’s a delicate one, and I totally agree that the crowd has a responsibility to the artist, as does the artist to the crowd. The show isn’t going to get to that euphoric level of awesomeness unless both go full throttle. But here’s where it gets interesting for me: when Jack and his band came out for the show I was attending, the entire crowd went absolutely nuts.

I’ve seen a handful of shows at Radio City Music Hall in the past year — e.g., Rodrigo y Gabriella and Florence & the Machine — and none of them got the crowd to their feet before a few songs; even then, the moments where people did start grooving were one off, following popular or particularly good songs, and were followed by lulls where people sat back down. Not Jack White. He had everyone going the second he walked into eye’s view, and after every song there was a roar of approval. No one sat down the entire show. Completely bonkers (especially for a venue with no general admission pit).

An hour later and he was still killing it. I left my seat two songs in, moved up to the rail of the first mezzanine, and didn’t stop moving until the end of the show. I don’t have a voice today and I’m pretty proud of it. Pure excellence.

But the entire show, Jack didn’t say anything. He sang, but he didn’t address the crowd at all. We addressed him, and the feedback was still apparently genuine enough that everyone was into it. But as I sit in this glow the day after, what I’m wondering now is: did Jack give a shit? The day before he pretty explicitly didn’t, but for me he seemed to be totally into it. Or was he? Is it possible that he’s just that good that he could power through not giving a fuck and still give an awe-inspiring performance? I don’t want to admit that that’s possible. It would kind of ruin it for me… but fuck, I’m still wondering? And even if he did, does it matter? I loved the show. I’ll never know what inspired it, so is it even worth contemplating its authenticity (in the sort term)? Wouldn’t it be better to just apply whatever reasoning seems appropriate and be glad I had an awesome time?

I think so, and what’s more is, the moment is over. It’s in the past, so whatever. I had an awesome time, and wasn’t thinking about this until now, and now it’s too late for any stray ideas to ruin anything. There’s nothing to ruin!

What a good show…

• 3 min read

Labels, Love, and Sex.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships and how intense they can be. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how there are different labels for popular types of relationships, and how certain fringe-type relationships don’t have labels and are harder to talk about, precisely.

For example, most of us have some people in our lives that we would label as family; specifically, you might have a brother or a sister, a mom and a dad, etc. There are other people that are labeled as friends. Others still labeled as partners, coworkers, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc. All these labels imply certain roles and have attached to them different levels of responsibility and intensity. If the labels are the dots, love is the line connecting them; love is a measure of how intense two labels are connected.

Now, for people labeled as lovers — people that are mentally and physically intimate with and exposed to one another, people who are absolutely and wholeheartedly honest with one another — love is (relatively) easy. I’ve experienced that kind of love. It’s awesome and in its prime, it’s effortless. You’re having sex and feel absolutely connected; lost in the union. The next day you wake up to the person and everything is easy and blissful and beautiful. Sex does that. There’s very little left to hide after sex, very little left to be discrete about; and the more often you feel connected to someone in that unique way, the more it becomes normal to feel that there aren’t any secrets anymore. You feel free and unaffected by the troubles of the world. The more frequent this kind of feeling manifests itself, the easier it is to take it for granted and less work you have to do to maintain it.

But what happens when the other person is no longer a lover? You break up? Or you get bored with the routine that once made love easy, be it in the context of a marriage or long term relationship? Then where are you? It’s easy to move into the label of ex’s at that point, but then you’ve given up on love. Love is a hell of a drug to drop cold-turkey.

Then you have to work for love. Then you have to find a way to be utterly and ultimately connected and exposed, within boundaries. The two — boundaries and ultimate connectedness — are at odds, and yet they need to be at harmony. You know why? Because the whole world is connected by love, and yet we only formally endorse the relationships labeled as “lovers”, be they our own or those of others. It’s hard work to figure out a path for love that works under other labels or in label-less relationships. Why else would we not cross into the unknown territory of love with people like our coworkers, friends, or acquaintances? Or our enemies, for that matter. We don’t do it because it’s difficult and it’s risky. You no longer have the listless, frictionless, free ride that is “the lover’s” epitaph. But fuck that. It should be manifest destiny when it comes to love.

And you know why this is important? Because there’s no such thing as “happily ever after”. People change. People die. People move on. It’s motion and it’s inevitable. Happy moments don’t freeze for later consumption. So if you’re going to make it in this world, you need to learn how to love within the boundaries of whatever hand you’re dealt.

Take this one step further.

If ex-lovers can figure out how to still love inside the context of their unlabeled existence, and in fact need to figure out how to do this, otherwise suffer the fate of eternal letdown; then who’s to say every type of relationship shouldn’t be driven by the same effort to love. Those types of relationships that lack classification, they need to be connected by love too, for your own sake, because everyone you know one day will die, until the only thing you’re left with are bitter sweet memories and other cynics. That’s not a world I want to live in. I want to know how to love those other grumpy old-minded people, too.

Love thy enemy, right? Love thy neighbor? There have been a number of pretty popular books and philosophies based around these concepts, and I’m beginning to realize why… Love people with a relentless effort. Attempt to love everyone, in whatever framework of a relationship the universe provides you with, whether the person ends up being the ying to your yang, someone who you can’t stand, or anything in between. At the very least, whatever you do, don’t purposefully hate.

An afterthought: This makes a lot more sense after having experienced a loss than it does during the bliss. So does pretty much every heartbreak song, ever…

• 1 min read

Optical Implants and Evolution

Here’s some cool technology: an optical implant that trans-codes visual stimulus into the format that the cells in your eye expect, rather than just increasing the magnitude of the signal. The technology is in its infancy right now, but it sets the stage for some really awesome progress, in the realm of helping the disabled, but also enhancing the average.

Imagine being able to replace your stock eye hardware with something that could produce twice the resolution. Basically, what if you could undergo a procedure that took your vision from 20/20 to 20/10, or 20/1? Assuming it was safe, that be pretty awesome, moral qualms aside.

But what’s really interesting to me is how evolution would adapt to this kind of progress. Assuming you could get the increased amount of information to your brain, you’d still need the processing power to crunch it all down into something useful. There would be a ceiling to how much you could throw at your mind, before you started loosing information, or otherwise just burning yourself out. As we approach that ceiling (sometime in the future), I imagine people with the power to process more information than others might end up winning in modern day natural selection, and evolution might start making its effects known in fewer generation cycles. This is different from what I might consider natural-evolution, because in natural evolution, beneficial mutations come over long periods of time and are ad hoc; in the case of human-directed evolution, the changes are presumably always beneficial and much more drastic.

Just some thoughts…

• 2 min read

Ben Graham and High Frequency Trading

Just read Ben Graham’s book, “The Intelligent Investor” which taught me a lot about investing, specifically about the logical divide between speculation and value-investing. It was really insightful.

Armed with that knowledge, and having my curiosity stirred by all the opportunities being offered to software developers in High Frequency Trading, I started thinking about HFT field and how it relates to Graham’s principles. Trying to make a long story short: given the little I know about HFT, the two don’t jive. 

HFT is based on inefficiencies in the market place, and can only be profitable while those inefficiencies exist. It seems to me that at some point, as this pool dries up, there will be an overvaluation. But what’s more disconcerting, personally, is the rapidity and lack of human interaction to this hack of a field (I call it that because it’s using the market in a purpose for which it was not intended to be used). 

Value investing, at its core, involves a deep understanding of the companies you’re going to invest in. Certain securities (indexes, certain etfs, etc.) can be used to value invest with less of an understanding, but that’s besides the point. Pulling the trigger on a trade only happens after you’ve come to the conclusion that the investment is sound. The risk exists in the tail end of your understanding; the unpredictable noise that is the sum of the unaccounted-for, difficult to measure variables. For example, weather, sickness, related industry failure, or any of the number of things you couldn’t infer from the earnings report. But that’s why you diversify, hoping that for a group of sound companies, those variables don’t overlap, and that you’ll make money in the long run, no matter what.

But for HFT the trigger is getting pulled a bazillion times each second, based on the assumption that you’ve determined a pattern from what is essentially noise – market fluctuations. Graham noted a number of “trading strategies” which were essentially arbitrary algorithms trying to pull causation out of correlation (which is really the only conclusion you can come to when no consideration for the value of your investments is being made in your trading decisions). They all failed, and took a number of people out with them. To me, HFT seems very similar to such examples, the difference being here that the magnitude and volatility of trades both are much greater, as I expect the fall out will be.

I was talking about this with some friends at work, and today this article make it’s way onto my reading queue. Pretty wild to see how much craziness HFT has introduced into the stock market. Makes me wonder if the recent explosion at Knight Capital represents the floor or the ceiling to the problem. Also, I wonder how much the risk of HFT is correlated to the risk of the market in general?
All of that being said, these are the first thoughts that pop into my mind given an extremely naive understanding. I’d love for someone to point out the glaring hole in my argument. Regardless, first things that popped into my head, given the little I know.
• 2 min read

First things, first.

There have been a lot of topics on my writing queue lately, but wanted to start off with an idea I’ve been ping-ponging with my rediscovered friend, Jude Safo.

The topic in question is choice and how it manifests itself. In a recent conversation, Jude brought up this Freudian principle: the idea that the unconscious mind comes into contact with a near infinite amount of stimuli, filters it, and then propagates high level concepts to our conscious mind. Thinking about it from a software engineer’s perspective, this explanation involves a lot of hand waving. For example, how the unconscious mind filters everything to come up with the high level priorities it does is beyond me. Also, the difference between the conscious and unconscious minds is a ambiguous, at best. If the unconscious mind works linearly and deterministically, whereas the conscious mind is more ad-hoc, incorporating memory and inference into its workings, then what processes are really influencing the conscious mind? Seems like there’s still a lot to be defined…

None the less, however lacking in depth, these are the models I use in every day language, so I’ll roll with it.

Just to clarify, at this point we’re talking about how the unconscious mind deals with the moment’s direct stimuli – observations made with one of our direct senses – and uses that information to inform the higher level conscious mind of what’s going on. The conscious mind then uses that information along with other stored information – like memory and imagination – to form a decision.

OK. So here’s the question that pops up into my head.

For things like ants, it’s pretty easy to work with the above model. Their high level brain function seems to be somewhat predictable as indicated by how we can model their behavior on the colony level. How ‘bout that for hand waving, eh! But when you start talking about people, things get more complicated.

People can predict the future state of the world. That’s our niche. We have high level intuition. Not just instinct or reflex, but the ability to consciously think of what might happen next, and assign a rough probability to each potential option. Well, what happens when such an ability has a misadvertised level of accuracy? If I think everyone is going to laugh at me when I give that speech next week, it’s going to influence my behavior, undoubtedly. Yet, most of the time when I think of things in a self-conscious manor, the expectation is way worse than the reality. These kinds of biases exist all over the place. Alright, fine. No big deal, right?

Here’s where I think it get’s real interesting. If I manage to convince someone else that getting laughed at while giving a speech is feasible, next time said person listens to a speech, they might actually laugh at the person giving it. So now, a behavior I just imagined, which was an inaccurate model at the time, has become accurate. What if this kind of recursion goes on indefinitely. How does that affect the human colony’s behavior?

What happens when you start applying this principle to other fields of study; those which are built on top of the idea that human behavior is linear and deterministic?

Economics: If I make an investment, does it follow that other people are likely to think that investment sound? Relationships: If I think my friend/lover is thinking something, and act on it, and it turns out that they weren’t thinking that something, how does that affect the outcome of our relationship. If I think that they’re thinking about me thinking about something. How does that affect things? What happens when you go N levels deep? 

Those are the first things that come to mind…

Anyway, my train is pulling into my stop. Let’s call it at this; more proofing to come.

• 2 min read

"The Invitation" by Oriah

Was at a wedding and the officiant read this poem during the ceremony. I thought it was really powerful, so I asked her for the source. Thought I’d share it here…


The Invitation by Oriah 

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.


It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know 

if you will risk 

looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.


It doesn’t interest me

what planets are 

squaring your moon…

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.


I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.


I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you 

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.


It doesn’t interest me

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.


I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.


I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”


It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.


It doesn’t interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.


It doesn’t interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know 

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.


I want to know

if you can be alone 

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments. 


I found this at what I assume is the author’s web site, here: http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/

• 2 min read

Facebook

I’m trying to figure out how to use Facebook non-narcassitically. I feel like a large part of what I’ve recently posted has been too “look-at-me” and shallow…

I think Facebook is a tool, and, aside from logistical stuff like event planning, it’s best used to share beautiful, mutually beneficial, and inspiring things: meaningful photos, art, yet-to-be-answers questions, postulates, etc. 

Too often, though, I use it to as a naive way to satisfy a craving for self-affirmation and an outlet for pride. I find myself taking place in idle and increasingly boastful conversation, and that’s bad. Really, if I think about it, most of the time I’m just talking to myself, since what I post usually doesn’t get anyone thinking; any interaction those empty posts provoke might as well be scripted.

What it comes down to is this: this type of participation doesn’t help anyone – both me, the producer, or my readers – be any happier or more content with life.

Certain features of Facebook promote this type of behavior, too. For instance, the Facebook newsfeed aggregates information using really crude heuristics. Those heuristics aren’t disclosed, but it’s pretty obvious that things like ‘comment’ and 'like’ count account for what makes it past the popularity filter and what doesn’t.

Well, I’d argue that vapid content is more often liked and commented on than rich content, due to the circle-jerk nature of the internet and our need for instant gratification. It happens, and it’s not really anyone-in-specific’s fault, but what it results in is a lot of rambling and not a lot of conversation on quality content. When you log onto Facebook, you’re presented with a wall of nothingness.

What’s more is, I’m not sure Facebook is really looking to address this issue. People participating in the endless search for instant-gratification means more traffic for them, where-as a system designed to promote thought and evoke complex emotion, is slower in nature. When you’re stricter on you’re standards of quality, your rate of production slows, because it’s difficult to produce. Subsequently, if content is richer, it’s more likely to be of a higher density as well, and thus harder to consume.

A solution, assuming my conjectured opinion on Facebook being disinterested is wrong, might be kind of what Google did with circles, but perhaps implemented differently. This isn’t a new idea and i’m not trying to take credit for it, but: if there were a way to easily focus content toward a select group of people, I think you could exchange some of the overwhelming noise for depth and interest. If I could use Facebook as both a hub for identity (a profile) and a way for precise focused communication (as opposed to the current broadcast oriented model), without the distraction of everything else, I’d consider that a step in the right direction.

On the other side of things, there’s also a requirement for discipline on my end. I’m the arbiter of my Facebook production and consumption. Facebook may not be ideal, but wishing for an ideal tool is somewhat pointless and indicative of laziness*. Perhaps the best way to use Facebook is to stop endlessly checking and updating it, and instead filter things from behind the keyboard.

*While wishing for ideal tools is pointless, building ideal tools is very much the opposite. But that’s another story…

• 1 min read

(Untitled)

Sometimes, programming makes me think of what it must feel like to be a wizard…

When my fingers are moving faster than I thought they could, and EMACS buffers are flying around, and files are opening and closing, and compilations are occurring, and reference documents are being foreground-ed and background-ed; all simultaneously and while listening to fast paced awesome music, I can’t help but feel like there’s a little magic involved…

• 1 min read

(Untitled)

I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

-Maurice Sendak on Fresh Air in 2011. [all interviews with Sendak here] (via nprfreshair)

• 3 min read

Bansky on Advertising

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriends feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. 

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange, and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. 

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t [ever] start asking for theirs.

-Banksy

Hopefully, going to come back and edit-in my response to this…

…and here we go.

I love this; it resonates with me so perfectly. I don’t know if I’m really entitled to that opinion, myself being as much of consumer as anyone, but fuck, it still feels good to hear someone say it.

I remember taking Advertising & Culture and Corporate Identity in college, and the majority of my rants shared a similar foundation to Banksy’s above: namely, that there is no implicit righteousness to what just-so-happens to be the popular idea. The way I see it, Banksy takes this truth and concludes that the lack of righteousness equates to a lack of authority, and therefore any rules and regulations based on said authority are null and void. I agree wholeheartedly.

A slightly different conversation that I think is also worth having is the nature of this virus’s origin. 

I don’t believe the objectifying, materialistic, stereotyping media is the product of some malicious overlord, cackling in his mansion. “The Man” is a construct, more so than a person. Instead, I think we – the collective – watch and listen to advertising and accept it as being acceptable, even if it doesn’t line up with our morals. And then, when it comes time to create the next generation of ads, that same set of people gets drafted to do the deed. Consumers and producers are not mutually exclusive. The advertisers own ipads, too. Yet, at least in my own naive experience in the field, we tend to market toward what we think the majority of people accept as ideal, as opposed to what we know to be ideal, what we know to be the truth. It’s like we’re afraid to market the truth, because we think the people on the other side of the television screen are too stupid to handle it.

Reminder: insert paul rand plug here. Innovation through bold, explicit, and truly unique branding.

Going back to Banksy’s blurb above: even if we got to the point where 100% of marketers were trying demonstrate truth-in-advertising, I still don’t think that would give them the authority to shove a message down our throats, unreciprocated. You still have the right to ‘throw the rock back’ sort of speak. I’m just saying the message is all-too-often the proverbial rock because of this unchecked recursion of perverted ideals. Back to the point… 

Granted, this slice of the pie is slowly fading, as the stage for marketing grows smaller in size and higher in count; and as higher quality and more ethical advertising gets cast in the place of the behemoth jack-of-all-trades ads of mass broadcasting. In the macro-scope of things, this paradigm shift is dramatic and obvious. For example, Red Bull has transitioned from poorly drawn cartoons ranting about how the drink “gives you wings”, to showing me videos of extreme sports athletes doing awesome things. 

But in the practical space, this dichotomy lives on. Sitting around the round table, ping-ponging ideas back and forth still breeds more cliched and will-be-cliched ideas than ever, and I think it’s in this space, where you truly see why advertising is a craft; a skill to be honed and mastered, like any other.

Because master advertisers cut through the shallowness of it all. They see that in order for a campaign to be successful, it has to be real; and to build a narrative that people can accept as real, you have to be truthful. Lies aren’t maintainable and will eventually become noise, like played out radio music or whatever.

I’m not sure if any firm truly employees this strategy, as money has skewed a lot. Maybe the khan academy, or the bill-and-malinda gets foundation… 

I’ll get back to this… tired now.

• 4 min read

Skydiving

Today, I went skydiving.

I’m going to try and get something insightful out of my head while it’s still fresh, but I doubt that’ll work very well, considering the whole thing has been a blur from the second I got on that plane…

My buddy Charlie and I have been sending videos of BASE jumpers, skydivers, and wing-suit fliers – pretty much anything involving terminal velocity, gravity, and a parachute – back and forth to one another, for the past 6 months or so. In print, it’s always been the next rung in the ladder. We’ve done gnarly things with the snow, wind, and waves, so gravity at 13,000 feet was the next logical progression. That being said, the hypothetical instant messaging of two extreme-oriented dudes and the reality-based shock of actually planning such an adventure, are two very different things.

I am terrified of heights; or at least, that’s what I always thought.

On skis, I can hit pretty large jumps. The two biggest booters I ever hit were the 2010-11 Dew Tour jumps at Mount Snow, which were 60 and 70 feet respectively. With those jumps, you’re in the air a decent amount of time and completely at the mercy of your own ability.

On a kite, I’ve boosted 10-15 feet at a time.

When you’re in the moment and committed, neither of these endeavours seem so daunting or that high, and even if they did, they only last 2 to 3 seconds, max.

But skydiving… with that, you’re in the air… eh em… high in the air for a bit under 10 minutes. Just the idea of such a long hang time gave me the mental wiggle room to think of every possible disaster possible, and it’s always made skydiving unapproachable for me.

There’s no way to ease into it. No way to work you’re way up from something smaller. It’s go big, or nothing…

Well, needless to say, when Charlie called me up two weeks ago and said we were booked, I was nervous. I drove up to New Paltz, NY not knowing what to expect. The day before the jump I was entranced by the idea. I meditated on it. I paced. I bugged out with excitement and anxiety. And then the morning came and we were finally off to the dropzone. We get there, and the girl behind the desk said it was too cloudy, sorry, and that we’d have to come back another time. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. And then, just as we were walking back to the car, she tells us the jump was back on… only to let us down again.

I’m pretty sure your heart is not supposed to do the kind of gymnastics I put it through that day. Those moments just prior to commitment are the most tense and jagged. But they’re also indicative of you being on the right path…

On one hand, I need to do this before I die, if not only once. Until I do, I will be forever disappointed in myself for not taking advantage of the one life I know I have. On the other hand, I have to get over this incredible mental barrier of fear and in-the-moment resistance to do so.

Fast forward a week later, to today (4.7.2012). I booked and planned our dive for 9:30 in the morning out in eastern Long Island, NY. This time, things were different. Prior to the day of the jump, I started really digging down into my fear until I became an expert on its nuances. The meaning of the phrase “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself” revealed itself to me. I started to think that, yes, there will be typical physical fear: my body is going to sweat and my heart is going to beat, both more than usual. But it’s when you start adding meaning to these things, and let them build into a feedback loop of anxiety, that you become crippled. Don’t do that, and you’re set.

With that realization made, I drove out to our dive nervous, but ready for anything.  Just prior to our getting on the plane I was amped. In the plane, I was awed and ready, and even when people started jumping out the plane, I knew that I’d be – mentally, at that moment – o.k.. In fact, I was joking around and high-fiving people; by the time I got to the bay door, I was itching to get out.

Ironic, much? 

And then I was in the air, and none of it mattered a bit, one way or the other.

Fuck fear; thought in general was not something I was occupied with. The world was rushing by me and, after hitting terminal velocity, gravity didn’t really exist. I was in a dream. I was going faster than I ever had before (sans mechanical assistance), with the most incredible view ta’ boot. I’d say more, but when I said ‘thought’ wasn’t something I was taking part in, I meant it. Every sense was so overwhelmed; I remember literally thinking that falling all the way to the ground wouldn’t be the worst way to go. It was bliss. No fear. All now.

Then my tandem instructor pulled the ripcord, and things became even more surreal. It wasn’t violent or jerky, like I expected, but actually a pretty mellow deceleration, the result of which is real-life flying. When you’re falling, there’s no real control or direction (other than down); you’re just falling. But when you’re under the 'chute, you can steer, and that’s when you feel like a bird.

I had my arms out like wings, and took the reigns for a little bit, too. I remember saying, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with this” over and over again, as the euphoria of the moment began to contrast with my now returning thoughts; this was supposed to be scary, but was instead the most excellent thing I could possible be doing. My instructor was asking me how I liked it and pointing to where we’d land. And like that it was over.

I hit the ground like a feather – it’s amazing what parachutes do – and proceeded to laugh and squirm uncontrollably in giddy pleasure for a few minutes. I found Charlie, we did a bro-mantic chest bump, hugged everyone in a hundred foot radius, and then walked back into the hanger.

Scheduling the next trip in t-minus…

• 3 min read

Einstein's Watch - An Exploration of Empathy

A post by reddit user, johnnynottoscale, originally found here: 
http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/qn1bu/einsteins_watch_an_exploration_of_empathy/ 
Quoted here and shared with author’s explicit permission.


em·pa·thy/ˈempəTHē/ : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.

Einstein maintained a healthy skepticism towards concepts. On the subject of scientific theories he wrote: “Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.” In other words: our ideas about how the universe works are merely ideas, and we ought not confuse them with reality. He follows this with an illuminating analogy:

In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.

Now, dear reader, you may be wondering just how this might relate to empathy, the purported subject of this blog post. There is a parallel to be drawn: We are all Einstein’s watches to one another.

You see, the human condition is rigged so that my subjective reality is not yours to experience, and words are often the flimsiest bridges between people. So essentially, we are mysteries to one another. Like Einstein’s watch, I’m unable to peer inside of your head to see what makes you tick. So like any good scientist, I collect data, and I test various hypotheses. Eventually I build a model in my head that represents you. Its dimensions and contours fit all the data, and I may be tempted to say that it is you–but that would be the terminal point of empathy.

All to often, we confuse others with the ideas we have of them in our heads. Seems innocuous enough; we have evidence to back our ideas up…it’s not like we’re pulling something out of thin air, right? However, if you follow this pseudo-empathy to its extremities, you’ll find the foundation of all the fucked up racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and just about any other other-phobia in the world.

When you become complacent and satisfied that you know someone, you’ve lost your curiosity. You’ve forgotten that the model in your head is just a model in your head, and you’ve mistaken it with reality. A true scientist is never wholly satisfied with his theory–regardless of how many data points he has to corroborate it. Just as science has undergone revolution after revolution–from ‘God pulls all the strings’ to Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics–our concepts of others should always be open-ended and subject to change, for they are quite capable of undergoing revolutions of their own.

The most exciting aspect of my relationship with my wife has not been the prospect of ever knowing her completely. Rather, it’s been the perpetual fleshing out and revision of my idea of her. Countless times I’ve had to scratch off an adjective or bullshit freudian analysis I’d stuck on her. Countless times I’ve run into uncharted territory, which has thankfully been mostly beautiful and fascinating. Our relationship has had such success because each of us allows the other’s being to speak for itself. We do not invent intentions for one another. I don’t reduce her to a simple sum of forces [genetics + environment + culture + race + personal history] not because I think that the solution to such an equation would be wrong, but because I can’t pretend to know and grasp all of the intricacies and details of all of those variables. For all intents and purposes, she is Einstein’s watch to me.

• 1 min read

No. Fucks. Given.

Written by some random dude on the internets:

Have you ever played any RPGS, like Final Fantasy?

You, real life you, are the protagonist of this story. Everyone, and I mean everyone else is a [Non Player Character].

Your mom is an NPC, your boss is an NPC, every stranger on the street is an NPC. Hell, even your shitty little cat is an NPC.

Now, how much do the NPCs really affect you? NPCs are never the story, my friend, they only exist to help you move the story along. Your story.

So if you screw up, or feel awkward, or want to start a conversation with a stranger, then don’t feel stressed out. Laugh it off, you’re the protagonist, they’re just an NPC. They deserve no fucks.

I’m telling you this because your story needs to move along. I’ve been put here by the gods of this narrative for just one purpose, to help you see the truth. I’m your muse and I’m revealing a major fucking plot point here, something the other NPCs will never tell your: this is your story.

Live it the way you want to. No. Fucks. Given.

Such awesome stuff.

Quick legend for non-geeky friends:

  • Replace PRG with drama, film, etc.
  • Replace NPC with supporting actor.
  • Replace muse with lead supporting actor. 
• 3 min read

Breaking Down Some Language; Because Mysterious Doesn't Mean Wise

If everything that is discussable can be defined as an instance of a concept, where we define concept as the encapsulation of many complimentary ideas into a consistently recognizable pattern, then the Zen idea of duality becomes definable. I came across this idea while reading Shunryu Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. He talks about how the mind and body are both eternal and finite, simultaneously; he describes this phenomenon through a metaphor calling mind and body “two sides of the same coin”.

I find this kind of language both confusing, frustrating, and misleading. I also find it ubiquitous, as this wisdom-in-fallacy has become somewhat of a generic style for presenting philosophical information (especially in the Buddhist writings I’ve read).

  1. I find it confusing, because the metaphor is seemingly contradictory.
  2. I find it frustrating, because, while I agree with the sentiment that meditation trumps reading ten-fold, I still feel like readings can unveil the source of suffering; so to have someone who understands the nature of suffering use language I don’t understand makes me feel like I have an answer stuck on the tip of my tongue.
  3. And I find it potentially misleading, because when an established school of thought – an authority – starts using incomprehensible language, you run the risk of blind acceptance, where students try to force their experience into a definition, rather than formulate an articulation from their honest observation.

That being said, when you do stumble upon an understanding that happens to coincide with an existing concept, that concept then thereafter seem obvious, even if prior inspection had you feeling as I describe above.

Anyway, back to the point: mind & body both end and go on forever. I think the understanding to take away here is that the concepts or abstractions that we refer to as mind and body are the sum of many different things. I mean this literally.

Think about the body: it is the thing that we best relate our physical presence with; it is the thing composed of organs, cells, and atoms; it is the thing, ever changing, moving through time, aging and deforming as it passes the days. 

The same thing applies for the concept of mind: it is the thing composed of a personality; it is the thing that has mood; it is the thing that influences the environment in which it is alive within; it is the thing that is thinking; and it is one of the things that is remembered, regardless of whether it is present or not.

So when we say mind & body both end and don’t end, it’s really a matter of realizing that certain components of each end and don’t end. When we die, the atoms in our body don’t end, but the abstract concept of our physical manifestation is no longer maintainable, by definition. After death, our minds may not do what we traditionally refer to as ‘think’, but the influence we had during our life still lingers. We may not be able to think about a mind that has died the same way as when it was alive, but we still think about it!

I think the take away is that the abstractions we hold, collectively, as humans, are empty. They have no substance, but are merely an interpretation of the raw data we consume through observation. So while the abstraction may die, the reality persists, even if we think of the two as synonymous; however, even though they are different, neither is more or less important than the other. That’s what “two sides of the same coin” means; the raw reality cannot be expressed or experienced without an abstraction through which it can live, and the abstractions are void unless they describe some sort of reality.

Where we get in trouble is when we start describing abstraction in terms of other abstraction. Then you run the risk of becoming too worked up in trying to understand and keep track of all the variables at play in your model. Meditation is a cure for that ailment, because it trains you to let go of those abstractions before you have the chance to build upon them.

• 1 min read

Flushing the toilet while you're sitting on it is like betting it all on red; it can go either way...

Workplace bathroom behavior would make for an awesome case study. We spend 7+ hours at a place where we carefully maintain our social interactions, trying to optimize for very idiosyncratic professional goals, but one thing we all have in common: we all poop. And given the amount of coffee that gets consumed in highly competitive New York firms, I imagine this reality manifests itself quite frequently.

That being said, we don’t talk about it! I’m not trying to say that the topic should be the lunchtime conversation of choice, but merely noting that there’s this common behavior that functions independently of the communication feedback loop that influences so much of the rest of what we do!

So take this one: I go use the toilet; I’m the only one in the bathroom. As I finish and open the, what is now one of three, empty stalls; another man walks in. I proceed to wash my hands and he takes some paper towel and blows his nose; we are both looking into the mirror, silently. He hesitates at the mirror for about 20 seconds after he throws out his tissue, and the proceeds to walk into the stall I just walked out of. He knew I had just used the stall, so what was going through his mind? I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but I don’t like warm toilet seats, do you? I imagine not. Perhaps the fact that every stall has a bottle of Lysol disinfectant spray and toilet seat covers negates the, what I would expect to be normal, inhibition to use a just-used stall; perhaps this man was just weird; or perhaps this is a personal quirk of mine (I would use a different stall), and I’m the strange one. I guess we’ll never know…

• 1 min read

What Else Does/Can Google Know?

I wonder if Google gets enough private data from corporate users accidentally pasting snippets of proprietary information into their search bars, to come up with some sort of snapshot of a company’s private inner workings.

Undoubtedly they do for individuals, but I imagine that information is much more comprehensive; for example, if I constantly search for glutton-free recipes, Google can likely infer that I, or someone I know, has a restricted diet for what can assumed to be one or a small set of reasons.

But at work, at least for me, the things I search for are often much more nuanced and detailed, and thus seemingly arbitrary.

For instance, I often Google function definitions, sometimes without realizing they’re from one of my company’s internal libraries and other times mistakenly all together, thinking I’m using one of my company’s internal search tools (which inadvertently happens to interface with Chrome’s search bar). This kind of information, from a consumer’s (e.g. Google’s) perspective, has to look much more like noise than correlated data, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is noise; perhaps, when augmented with the information corporate users provide through purposeful searches of publicly available information, filtering and refining this “noise” into something more useful becomes possible.