The AI Feast

Before we discovered fire to cook our food, we spent a significant amount of time chewing. Consider gorillas, who, according to a nature show I watched, chew for hours each day. Some mountain gorillas even spend half their day gnawing on their food. But introduce fire, and you have a barbecue. The food is prepared quickly, and our bodies don't have to expend nearly as much time and energy breaking it down for digestion.

This is how I view AI technologies like ChatGPT. They're revolutionizing how we consume and process information, aiming to foster knowledge. They encourage us to think about thinking, and in doing so, they can help us better understand ourselves. Indeed, before we can effectively communicate with others, we need to comprehend ourselves. By gaining a clearer sense of our own worth, we're more likely to treat others as though they hold similar value.

However, there's always the risk of veering off course, even with the best intentions. This happens easily when we mistake the model for reality. We've been gnawing on leaves, and suddenly, we're presented with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Considering the current state of global health—with many countries, if not the entire world, struggling with obesity and poor health—the implications of this new cognitive feast could be substantial. It has the potential to amplify both benevolent and malevolent powers.

In AI and the future of humanity | Yuval Noah Harari at the Frontiers Forum , Mr. Harari breaks down some of his concerns. He’s not worried about terminator robots, he’s worried about how easily people are persuaded to do things that aren’t in there best interest. He makes a compelling point about the transformation of algorithmic functions from attention capturing to intimacy. Ultimately, he appeals to us to appreciate the power of language and leaves me wondering how little we even understand the degree to which language (a technology, and the very thing that makes up all the blocks for all our models of the universe) can be hacked, and us along with it. Now go chew on that for a couple hours.

AI Alignment: First Principles

The Intersection of AI Alignment and Self Alignment: A Case for Physical Practices

I’m not going to beat around the bush, I’m just going to say it plainly. Achieving AI alignment is a goal that first requires self-alignment. We cannot expect to correct an external relationship until internal balance is maintained. Otherwise, we will quickly find ourselves adrift in our own delusions. So here’s my belief: teaching physical alignment through practices like martial arts (Tai Chi specifically) will help individuals mentally and emotionally prepare themselves while seeking AI alignment solutions.

Developing Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation

Physical alignment practices help individuals develop greater self-awareness and self-regulation. By practicing mindfulness and present-moment awareness, individuals can develop the ability to recognize and regulate their own biases, emotions, and thoughts. This can help them approach their complex work with greater objectivity and clarity.

Fostering Empathy and Compassion

Physical alignment practices can also help individuals develop greater empathy and compassion for others. This is not only a critical skill for effective AI alignment but also for just being a kind person. Acknowleding our imbalance, our biases, means being vulnerable. Being vulnerable doesn’t take courage, it builds courage. A deeper understanding of this helps develop a deeper sense of connection and understanding with others. This allows us to take on and better appreciate the perspectives and values of different stakeholders. I’d say that was important to the development of AI systems.

Building Discipline and Resilience

Physical alignment practices can help individuals develop discipline and resilience. These are valuable traits for cybersecurity teams and other professionals working in the tech industry where burnout seems to be a critical issue. By developing the ability to focus and persevere in the face of challenges and setbacks, individuals can better navigate the complexities and uncertainties of AI alignment and cybersecurity.

Reframing Power and Conflict through Tai Chi

Practicing Tai Chi specifically means learning to approach conflict differently. The use of power is redefined because what power is and where it comes from is transformed. There is no clenched fist, there is no seeking of power. There is plenty of power all around, and more importantly within us. The problem is that we have been told that there is something wrong with us and something must be added. When in fact, it is the opposite. There is more to us than we can imagine and power is not force, but control, and knowing the minimum effort necessary is the best possible policy. Strength isn’t in the breaking, but in the holding up, learning to support ourselves and each other.

Conclusion: The Benefits of Physical Alignment Practices

Overall, by teaching physical alignment practices like martial arts to employees and cybersecurity teams, organizations can help develop the skills and perspectives necessary for effective AI alignment and cybersecurity. These practices can help individuals develop greater self-awareness, empathy, discipline, and resilience, which can ultimately contribute to more ethical and socially responsible AI systems. Additionally, promoting physical and mental wellness among employees can also contribute to a healthier and more productive workforce, which can benefit the organization in many ways.

I encourage you to consider incorporating physical alignment practices into your own life or workplace. The benefits are manifold and the impact on AI alignment could be profound. Oh, and if you need someone who teaches Tai Chi and is into cybersecurity- I know a guy.

What Holds Us Together?

7 months ago I saw the world differently. 

When it came to technology, I was worried about all the wrong things. For example, is my phone listening to me? Yes. Absolutely it is. But in so many more ways other than just listening to your voice. To appropriately quote the Police, it measures “every step you take and every move you make.” Listening isn’t the issue. 

Whether or not my phone is listening to me isn’t even on my top 10 list of sci-fi-future fucked-up shit I worry about now. We live in a world with an electric heartbeat. Digital pulses and near-psychic interfaces link us instantly to each other. We are caught as much in the technological net as a fly is trapped by a web. But we are also as much on the web like the spider as caught like the fly. Complete and full immersion. Hunter and hunted. Most of us think the internet is an amusement park when it’s actually a hunting ground. IoT (Internet of Things) isn’t a luxury, it’s a hunter’s blind. And is it me or does anybody have a problem with the use of the word “Things”? “Things” sounds like the sequel to John Carpenters alien horror film (probably my favorite horror movie, ever).

Technology has made each of us more powerful and more vulnerable simultaneously. Any one of us with just a little training could create chaos with a few clicks of the keyboard. For instance, I spent last weekend on the Department of Homeland Security’s website taking classes on Infrastructure Control Systems and cyber security. ICS monitor and control systems that often require real-time info and are extremely sensitive to delay, systems in which shutdowns can be catastrophic. Think dams. Think power plants. Think runaway trains. Think nuclear centrifuges. Big stuff that needs to work really well or all the lights go off, shit explodes, glows and fragile ecosystems are destroyed.

After 6-hrs of videos and tests about the Vulnerabilities, the Risks, the Threats, the Methodologies, IT Mapping, and the Consequences of cyber security issues with ICS, I was not optimistic. Nope, I was more like, “Sweet Mother of Burning Circuits, we are in trouble!”  Don’t trust my hyperbole, check out the links below.

Water Plant Hack in Florida-Oh, Florida...

Hackers in Electric Grid-Yep, this is no joke. 

Easy Access Tools-It’s way too easy for the bad guys.

Or go read Sandworm.

But don’t worry, I got a plan to save the world.

Next up: Cyber-Sorcerer-Ninja-Detective

AI and the Great Filter

Lex Fridman & Max Tegmark discuss AI and the future of Humanity. I came across this podcast researching machine learning. What a treasure. These guys cover a lot of ground in three hours. Here are my favorite topics:

(08:15) – AI and physics
(21:32) – Can AI discover new laws of physics?
(30:22) – AI safety
(47:59) – Extinction of human species
(58:57) – How to fix fake news and misinformation
(1:59:39) – AI alignment
(2:05:42) – Consciousness
(2:29:53) – AI and creativity
(2:41:08) – Aliens

After you make it through the whole thing, please share with me what you think about the concept of the big filter?

Hello Cybersecurity World

The world has changed. In the face of Covid, the ensuing shutdowns, and social distancing, I’ve made a change as well. I’ve been an in-person kinda guy all my life. Massage is literally a hands-on job. Martial arts also involves a fair amount of physical back and forth with another person. Since working face to face with people isn’t as easy anymore, I decided to retrain myself and transfer my skillset into another field of expertise. I landed on cybersecurity.

Just before covid, I was working my way through a javascript tutorial and dabbling in some python when I came across a bug bounty video. The process of hunting down flaws in programs and networks hooked me.  I couldn’t follow the particulars to save my life, but the process was thrilling: recon, identify vulnerability, exploit, entry, cripple, exit.

It struck me how similar this was to my pain management system. Pain management is about understanding flaws in the system and building programs to improve resilience. And martial arts is the study of conflict strategies. Thus, when the world shut down, I dove into a VM rabbit hole and enrolled in the University of Oregon’s Cybersecurity 6-month Bootcamp. 

I had found a way to continue identifying weak points, building up hardened systems, and fight bad guys.

In Bootcamp, everything is remote and we (my 15 person cohort) were thrown into the deep end of the digital pool immediately. You get a machine and you load it up on your own, and then go. You better be able to follow directions, even if you don’t know which way you are going or where you are. I have been three virtual machines deep and unsure of what window I was in because my cursor was lost between interfaces.

It’s impossible to describe concisely how much material we have covered in so little time. It can break a brain. Neural networks can only take so much. I have had some serious cerebral-buffer overflow issues.

I’ve heard Bootcamp experiences described as learning by firehose. I agree and at times this has even felt a little more like learning by flame thrower. I would recommend this program if you don’t mind feeling overwhelmed. 

Many nights, my mind melted from being on the command line trying to grep answers. 40-hrs a week studying just to keep up with each new offensive, defensive, or forensic application that is introduced. I tried short cuts that were long ways back to the beginning to do it all over again and again. My rig crashed, looped, rebooted, and eventually fried its battery. I learned to live in the glow of at least three screens at all times. It’s like playing missile command but they are checking for good grammar as well your strategic aptitude.

Supposedly speaking another language in your dreams is good evidence the language is really settling in. A move toward unconscious competence. Asleep, I find myself searching for the password to my dreams, unaware I am already asleep.  It would appear my subconscious is concerned with the abstract syntax of a deeper logic. It’s trying to hack its own psychic login and get root access.  Data denied the waking me, the user.  Am I running hot or just getting warmed up? Not sure, but I am totally fascinated.

Why cybersecurity? I have thought about it and there are a whole bunch of answers. OMG, have you heard of Nerdcore? There are so many answers that I can’t put them all in this post. The next few posts should really start to give a fuller picture. 

That said, one of my favorite responses to “why cybersecurity?” is found in an analysis of three movies:  Bladerunner, Tron, & The Matrix. 

You didn’t think this could get any dorkier, did you? Grab your favorite nerd, cause it gets so much dorkier. But I digress.  Why these three movies? Long story short, they explore the perils of accelerated technological growth and the consequence to humanity.

Why cybersecurity? Because I like big ideas and what’s bigger than the transformation of humanity? Wait, but what does cybersecurity have to do with the transformation of humanity? Well, I’m glad you asked.

I will be exploring just that. In the simplest sense, cybersecurity patrols the infrastructure that makes the information-world work. Every electronic communication, bank account transfer, social media post, email, link, app, and or website/game. None of it works without cybersecurity.  

Next: Sandworm

Homo Deus

Notes on Homo Deus

Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future by author Yuval Noah Harari makes you reconsider what you think you know about being human.

Here is my quick review of the book: I loved it! Just like his last two. But instead of just reviewing the book, I want to share my thoughts on some of the things that stand out for me in relationship to pain management.

Real quick though, this book isn’t for everyone. If you’re uncomfortable having your political, religious, philosophical, and general concepts of self challenged, then you will find this book disturbing on more levels than the author intends.

This book is a warning. It is trying to get us to pay attention, Like a passenger in car asking the driver to slow the hell down. You can’t take the turn you need at this speed.

I believe it also is a celebration of how far we have come and how far we can go. So let me throw this out there, if you cling to your belief structures like a life vest in an ocean of myths, this book is going to make you very upset, and it is going to deflate the concepts that keep your ego afloat. However, if you are looking for a better understanding of what are real challenges are right now, then buckle up because the twists and turns of history, science, psychology are going to make your head spin.

For those with short attention spans, below is a glimpse at the highlights of the book. For those who would prefer listening, here is a link (Yuval Noah and Steven Pinker) to a conversation with the author and Steven Pinker. My thoughts on how this applies to pain management follow.

-We’ve conquered- War, Plague, and Famine as the major mortality issues for humanity and next on the agenda for we will conquer death or become God-like in the pursuit.

-Spoilers: There is no soul, self, or free will as far as science is concerned and to believe so is to live in a fantasy world where you will be easily manipulated.

-The brain contains more than one mind and none of them knows what the other is thinking or why; and most of what you believe about the world (which includes yourself) is a confabulation (bullshit rationalizations) of these minds independent operations.

-The religion evolution went kinda like this: from nature to gods to a single god to nationalism to humanism and now data. Long live Data! In algorithms we trust!

-All medical science leads to augmentation science. We will be upgraded. Or at least the rich will be.

-Algorithms are everywhere and will rule us and we will like it because we are blind to the deeper realities of our existence. 

-The AI of the future will know us better than we know ourselves and we will either be their pets (if we are lucky) or their pests (if we are not lucky).

-The next class system will be based on human and super human.

Part 1: 

Why Are We Killing Ourselves?

After reading Homo Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st century, I felt prepared for the author’s diagnosis of the current state of humanity and prognosis for its future. It’s not all doom and gloom by any means, just the end of humanity as we know it. Technically speaking it could be seen more as the continued transformation of humanity.

The book’s opening argument is that humanity has conquered War, Famine, and Plague as the major factors of human mortality. That’s 3 of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Who doesn’t think that’s a good thing? To make its point the book presents some disturbing information on mortality that I had to stop and look into myself. 

1. More people die from suicide then violent deaths.

2. More people die from poor eating habits than starving.

3. By 2050, 50% the population of earth will be considered overweight.

Here are some mortality per year (2017) numbers from the CDC.

Heart disease-647,457 

Diabetes-83,564 

Alcohol related deaths- 72,500

Suicide- 47,085  

Overdoses 47,450

Vs

Homicides- 19,510

Firearm Homicides- 14,542

Mass shootings- 335

The top half of these numbers are all self inflicted.  The CDC website reports: childhood obesity has tripled since 1970; alcohol related deaths have doubled since 1999; suicides have increased by 30% since 1999; and overdoses are up 137% (200% in relation to opioids). 

The articles I came across reported that the majority of criminal acts that lead to violent acts involve the sell or pursuit of drugs. That means for the purpose of buying drugs to alleviate pain or making money by selling drugs to people who are in said pain. What about mass shootings? I think the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by people who are on one level or another mentally ill and suffering from some sort of psychological and emotional pain. 

The common denominator for all these fall on spectrum of pain management. Drugs are used for (I am including alcohol here) reducing some kind of pain. Mental (emotional or psychological) and/or physical pain. Sure, lots of people use drugs and alcohol recreationally, but if drugs and alcohol are the recreation or needed to have any recreation, then odds are high that there is a hidden suffering not being addressed. What we are really doing is self medicating.

It would seem that a large number of people are under a daily burden that is inescapable without chemical assistance. Drugs and alcohol for the most part are our escape. So is sugar, or in general bad eating habits.

Why are we so sad, anxious, and disturbed when we live in the least violent and most prosperous age of human existence?

How many cavemen do you think killed themselves? I’ve asked this question to a few people and the answer I get back is none (note none of those people were anthropologist). While not scientific, the question makes a point. When life and death were a daily concern, people were to busy figuring out how to stay alive to consider killing themselves. When purpose was easily defined as don’t die today, people worked hard at staying alive everyday.  

It can be argued now that we no longer hunt or are being hunted we are haunted by an inner nature that no longer fits our environment.

The natural state of humans is to be concerned about getting killed, about having enough to eat. So, we naturally worry about things. In fact, its a feature of the brain. When the mind isn’t engaged in a particular task, the Default Mode Network kicks in. This is the part of our brain that has a tendency to ruminate and make us anxious. Its the portion of the brain calmed by meditation and attention training (quick self promotion: this is what I teach).

Worrying is a survival feature. Those who didn’t worry, didn’t live long enough to reproduce. Unfortunately, just because the natural threats no longer stalk us, doesn’t mean this feature for survival is no longer working.

The exterior environment may have changed, but our inner environment hasn’t quite caught up. We were born to solve problems. I mena real concrete problems. As in identifying the best tree to climb to sleep in so your a late night snack. We didn’t evolve to solve math problems or philosophical problems. Those are abstractions made possible by leisure and extreme access to resources. Those are fairly recent add-ons to the humanities skill set. We evolved to solve physical issues.

Our emotional and psychological health is tied more to our physical capacity for adaptation than being able to think your way out of an emotional problem.

In a way, life has become too easy and we have lost our resiliency. Our ability to deal with challenge, discomfort and uncertainty has shriveled like an atrophied muscle. Much like cell deteriorating effect of zero gravity on an astronaut’s physiology, the lack of constant physical strain/challenge has made us mentally and emotionally weaker.  

We now suffer from pain that we do not understand how to properly address. We have evolved to solve problems in an environment that no longer exists.

Instead of staying alive as the main function, we now are struggling with staying happy.

Our culture that has provided us a safer world has not prepared us to deal with ourselves. We wrestle and struggle with our thoughts and feelings. This leaves us with deep questions about worth and purpose that need to be addressed.

We are the most resource rich culture in history and we are killing ourselves hand over fist. It would appear that the more prosperous we become, the more likely we are to lose hope. What could possibly save us from ourselves?

This is important to appreciate because Yuval’s argument for humanities next agenda (now that we have conquered war, famine, and plague) is that we are going to conquer Death itself and transform humans into gods. 

Considering how bad we are at handling our feelings now, I wonder what kind of gods we will become.

Part 2

Kill The Gods, Long Live Data (continued in a week or so)

Cognitive Bias Codex: Cheat Sheet

BigThink has a quick cheat sheet for cognitive bias, reducing them to 4 basic groups.

1-There is too much information

2-We are always missing essential information because of how much there is

3-we Have to act quickly with limited info

4-Its impossible to remember everything

Natural Born Heroes

For those people who like real adventure and a desire to know what it means and takes to be a hero, boy do I have a book for you.

Natural Born Heroes is one part World War II heist and one part history of sport science. While managing to weave a thrilling yarn about how a band of ragtag spies kidnap a Nazi general on the Greek island of Crete, McDougall also investigates the history of fitness on a large scale, covering martial arts, endurance sports, hydration, and nutrition. On one hand introducing true-life swashbuckling heroes who pulled off the impossible; and on the other, a journey from ancient Minoan society to modern day to explore what it takes to be a hero.

First it’s a detective story exploring how a team of misfit British spies and Cretan sheep rustlers could possibly kidnap a Nazi general in the middle of occupied territory and live to tell the tale. The author doesn’t sit back and armchair this adventure, he travels the world finding leading experts on human fitness to prepare for a trip to Crete to try and redo the unimaginable trek of the good guys.   

Much like his last book chronicling ultra-endurance runners, Born to Run, McDougall puts himself in the middle of the action. He wants to cover the same ground as the story's protagonists, so he trains in parkour, natural movement, forging, nutrition, axe-throwing and sharp-shooting to prepare  for a trek through the treacherous Cretan mountains. 

The training covers: fascia vs muscle strength; how learning to throw transformed human capacity for sequential thought, imagination, and language; natural movement and the development of parkour; Pankration and development of Wing Chun; and echolocation.

One of the standout deliveries of the book offers insight into the gender and age gap in sports and performance.  It points out that the difference in men and women’s performance in strength and endurance is very small and that a sport allows for more flaunting or peacocking of the body.  Any skill gap that is so great between genders doesn’t make good evolutionary sense, because if men were that much faster and stronger than women, then they wouldn’t be able to mate very well.  Basically it breaks the gender (and age) gap down to nurture not nature. The reason men appear so much superior is because we don’t raise boys and girls to play together. It also points out that sports specialization has led to an observer culture. Less and less participation, which of course leads to less fitness and cooperation.

Other cool/interesting things examined in the book include: 

-Situational awareness and compassion as a survival strategy.

-Trials of endurance and strength as passage into adulthood.

-Weeds are good for you.

-There is a hydration conspiracy.

-How Churchill used magicians to win the war.

-Just how much of a badass Teddy Roosevelt really was.

-True movement requires risk.

-Fitness should be based on being useful.

-The rise of the gym is equal to the rise of obesity.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger ruined fitness for America.

All-in-all Natural Born Heroes is super informative, absolutely compelling, and downright inspiring.  This one definitely goes into the Kung Fu Science Fiction High School library.

The Baseline: Happiness Science

A whole lot of marketing focuses on happiness. Almost every advertisement begins with the assumption that you are not happy enough and what is offered will make you happier. People ask all the time, “Are you happy?” Do we know what we are asking about? What is happiness? What makes you happy? How happy can you get? How long can happiness last? Is it good to be happy all the time?

BigThink has some research on this elusive emotional skill, psychology, practice, currency.

“Activities such as exercise, expressing gratitude, altruism, and taking time to savor or appreciate the good things in life have all been shown to influence short-term wellbeing very much, and there is evidence that they can nudge that hedonic set point up the scale in the long-term as well.

Additionally, the hedonic treadmill is due, in part, to processes of desensitization and adaptation — we get used to things. Because of this, variety is a powerful means of combatting the hedonic set point's inexorable tug. Persistently engaging in a variety of positive activities or varying how one performs a given positive activity can trick your stubborn brain into actually feeling good about things.”

Myofascial Memory

Very interesting view on the conversation about cognition, time, and tissue.

LearnMuscles.com

“Research has found that fascia is richly innervated with nerve endings, making it a “tissue of communication.” Under certain dysfunctional conditions, a neuro-fascial interaction may be responsible for the setting of a local tissue “memory” (peripheral sensitization). Thus, touch or manual therapy may “unload” the tissue, causing a change in neural input to the brain which may trigger the memory.”

Exercise vs. Meds

Bigthink.com has an article discussing the benefits of exercise and how it is beginning to reshape how we think about treatment for psychological issues.

“The results were stunning. After leading the patients in structured exercises — each 60-minute session included a combination of strength training, flexibility training, and cardio — 95 percent of patients reported feeling better, while 63 percent reported feeling happy or very happy instead of sad, very sad, or neutral. A whopping 91.8 percent said they were pleased with their bodies during the sessions.”

It also has this lovely gem of a quote:

“Humans were designed to move. Bipedalism offers us serious advantages in lung capacity and communication systems. Humans are generally weak and slow for mammals, but the combination of mental ingenuity and physical dexterity gave us a competitive advantage, one we've exploited so effectively that, thanks to our technology, we now bow to the cult of the mind while abandoning the reality of our bodies. Yet we're paying the price for our conveniences.”

Cognitive Countering

Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast has a bunch of great conversations. Of particular interest are two that focus on how the mind is built to make mistakes and methods for overcoming our cognitive biases.

Maps to Misunderstanding is a conversation with Daniel Kahneman author of Thinking Fast & Slow. Discover System 1 System 2 and the difference between the remembering self and the experiencing self.

Mental Models is a conversation with Shane Parrish from The Knowledge Project podcast. Which looks like my next info-binge.

Sleep Myths

CNN.com has an article that has sleep experts correcting common misconceptions about sleep.

The quick run down is, you should get more sleep, lots more, but not too much. Here are the 10 myths they cover:

1. Adults need five or fewer hours of sleep.

2. It's healthy to be able to fall asleep 'anywhere, anytime'.

3. Your brain and body can adapt to less sleep.

4. Snoring, although annoying, is mostly harmless.

5. Drinking alcohol before bed helps you fall sleep.

6. Not sleeping? Stay in bed with eyes closed and try and try.

7. It doesn't matter what time of day you sleep.

8. Watching TV in bed helps you relax.

9. Hitting snooze is great! No need to get up right away.

10. Remembering your dreams is a sign of good sleep.

Dreaming and Skill Acquisition

Bigthink.com has an interesting article on the lucid dreaming and learning. Particularly of interest is the conversation about activation of motor neurons and thought.

“Interestingly, Llinás noticed that thinking fires motor neurons, the pathway we use to move our bodies. He believes thinking is an internalized form of movement; what we call consciousness is a mental representation of this phenomenon. Our mental maps allow us to predict how to navigate our environment. Combined with memory, our inner GPS creates and constantly updates this road map of prediction: move here, don’t go there, act this way but not like that.”

I see Internal Dynamic modules as exercises that increase our ability to create better mental maps of our our environments.

Mindfullness Debate

How do you define Mindfullness?

“To be clear, mindfulness and meditation are not the same thing. There are types of meditation that are mindful, but not all mindfulness involves meditation and not all meditation is mindfulness-based.”

Time For A Mental Upgrade

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the world isn’t always what it seems, and people have a tendency to rationalize a lot of bad decisions they make. It’s simple really, our genes haven’t caught up with our culture and that means our brains are running on out-of-date programs.

What would be interesting is to see how we begin to adapt our education policies in relation to what our real issues are. Namely, understanding our limits and learning to compensate for our biases. Here is a list from BigThink of 200 things your brain is designed to get wrong.

Self Compassion Meditation

BigThink has a research article on the health benefits of Self-Compassion meditation.

Which brings us to a new study, conducted at the Universities of Exeter and Oxford and published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science on February 6. The research team assigned two short-term self-compassion exercises to 135 participants alongside control conditions that involved negative, neutral, and positive valences. The results: people feel better, physically and mentally, when they practice kindness.

Specifically, when practicing self-compassion, the volunteers experienced reduced arousal — heart rate and skin conductance, increased parasympathetic activation, heart rate variability, etc. Their nervous systems responded better when their mindset invoked kindness instead of excitability and agitation. It's an interesting finding, however "the underlying processes for this," as the researchers explicitly state, are still "not well understood."

Tai Chi vs. Crossfit

Times has an article comparing tai chi to crossfit.

“It holds up when compared to other more strenuous types of exercise. “Over time, we see people who do tai chi achieve similar levels of fitness as those who walk or do other forms of physical therapy,” Irwin says. One study in theAmerican Journal of Epidemiology concluded that tai chi was nearly as effective as jogging at lowering risk of death among men. Another review inPLOS One found that the practice may improve fitness and endurance of the heart and lungs, even for healthy adults.”

Stretching Treats Inflammation, Does Help with Cancer?

Article discussing the effects of stretching and cancer treatment. Considering the amount of tissue winding and unwinding involved with internal arts method, this allows for a ringing out of the tissue as well as a stretching.

Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

I have this fantasy about creating a Kung Fu Science Fiction High School. The kids would get rigorous physical training 3 hours of the day from msater monk-ninjas, and their curriculum would be focused on saving the world from humanity. Yuvol Noah Harari’s work would be at the center of their studies.

Yuvol should be required reading or listening for those who want to understand the human condition and the complex evolving forces that form this condition. Sapiens covers the history of Homosapiens and just about every factor that has and still does affect each of us personally and everyone of us together as an entire species. It’s not a pretty picture but his sense of humor helps keep things in perspective. By far one of the best books I have ever read covering biology, psychology, sociology, technology, politics, economy, and religion. At the end of the book you find yourself front row and center for the big Now What? Well 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuvol walks you through the cognitive dissonance of the present and tries to provide a way through the maddening chaos of tomorrow. He asserts there are 3 great dangers we must come to terms with: nuclear war, climate change, and technological disruption. Terrorism, AI, Transhumans…oh my, the Apocalypse is already here, it’s just not equally distributed.