Sophie’s World: History of Philosophy (part 1)

I’ve recently started reading this book, and it’s been a great summer read for me. It is about a 14 years old girl who starts receiving letters from a mysterious person that is explaining philosophical concepts and trying to capture the beauty of philosophy.

The book is full of ideas and in this post, I will post a brief overview of the topics and the thoughts that came to me as I was reading it. (Mainly writing them down for my future self, even though I might have different thoughts if I re-read the book at a later time 🙂)

Reading strategy, for each chapter:

Skim through it
Read it and, as reading, take notes and add them to blog posts like this
Iterate on the notes one more time using the study guide linked in every chapter

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Recursion from first principles

Recursion is one of the things that makes computation happen – whether you’re doing something on your computer, smart TV, or smartphone.

For example, here’s a definition of the addition function represented in first-order logic:

$\forall y, add(0, y, y) \\ \forall x, y, z, add(x, y, z) \to add(S(x), y, S(z))$

Or, the more commonly known variant:

$\begin{aligned} 0+y &= y \\ S(x)+y &= S(x+y) \end{aligned}$

In this blog post, we will generalize recursive functions.

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High Five

On the 9th of January this year, I turned 5 years at Automattic. This is the longest time I’ve ever been working for the same company, the previous one standing at 4.5 years.

I remember talking to my friend who referred me to work at Automattic (further in the text A8c). At one point he said, “This company will spoil you (in a good way)! You will see!”. I was skeptical, naturally, “Sure, sure, it’s just another company, I work only to get paid and that’s it”, but turned out I was wrong.

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Chess

Chess is a board game, with 8×8 tiles and some figures on them. It’s a turn-based game, usually played by two players (or one, for practicing), and the players move these figures according to certain rules. The winner is whoever gets first to the other person’s King (a special figure). If you want to further learn the basics of it, this is a good introductory read.

Simple, right? In this post I’ll explain why I like chess and how I got obsessed with it lately 🙂

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Reflections on anxiety

The what

Anxiety is that feeling when you try to run away from something, but there’s actually nothing to run away from.

Here’s one definition, from Healthline:

Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. It’s a feeling of fear or apprehension about what’s to come. The first day of school, going to a job interview, or giving a speech may cause most people to feel fearful and nervous.

But it doesn’t always have to happen before or after some event. It can also happen randomly, e.g. when you chill, when you walk, etc.

The why

There are different anxieties.

In my case, it was/is due to over-analysis of even the most simple events in my daily life. For example, I was/am always considering the worst-case scenarios and how to handle them, should they happen, for each event. But the event can also be something in my head that didn’t really happen, my mind would just wander and start thinking of random possible situations. After thinking about it some more, I believe it relates to my profession, but that’s another topic for discussion.

But more generally, anxieties have to do with being less in the present, and being more in the past/future, or being more in some non-existent universe.

The solution

The obvious solution is to stay more in the present, but this is easier said than done. It is not hard at all, but it just requires practice and patience, as with everything else in life. Here I will share one hack that I found that seems to work.

We have thoughts. You can imagine they happen at one level. But a level above those thoughts is that with our thoughts, we can control our thoughts. (Do these levels really exist? I don’t know, but adding a structure makes it easier to explain for me and visualize for the reader)

One way to stay more in the present is to get rid of negative thoughts, by building a habit of positive thinking. To achieve that, one can build an “observer” in the mind, such that it will observe thoughts, and whenever a negative thought comes to it, it identifies it as soon as possible and switches the mind to something else.

Another way to stay more present is to physically stand up and regain control of your body. This also involves physical activity, like biking, jogging or swimming, or even walking.

Now, it gets a little bit more complex than that. For example, what is a “negative thought”? Sometimes these “negative thoughts” can save our life when the threat is real. The trick is to correctly distinguish fake threats from real threats:

A very brief example, the thought of a bear chasing you inside a shopping mall is very unlikely, but it is likely in the deep woods (for people that have bear-related anxieties).
For another example, if shortness of breath is due to anxiety, and not due to some underlying health condition, one should focus on their breathing and convince themselves that their health is okay (for people that have illness-related anxieties).

Personal appendix

Considering the levels again, I believe that a level above our thoughts is God; our very own ability to hack our mind comes from God. Here’s one quote that I like that seems to relate to anxiety: