Stochastic Perspective Optimization
You should try randomly permuting your mindset once in a while
Whether you like it or not, your life is governed by certain equations.
Our total latent and manifested creativity can be described with an energy function E(t), which is the sum of our kinetic energy K(t), the work, whether intellectual or physical we have performed over some interval of time, and our potential energy U(t), representing our current creative capacity. When I say creative do not refer to artistic activity. I mean to say any act, whether physical or intellectual, that creates new organization of matter. A thought for instance is a creative act because it organizes things.
As humans, the amount of creative power we exert at any moment in time tends to converge towards some stable value unless we deliberately add more power by taking executive control. You know this is true because focusing tires the mind. It consumes the consciousness, which is now immersed in a creative act. Maintaining a creative focus is hard. We subconsciously try to revert to using as little energy as possible – being lazy — because that is easier.
Abstract theories are valuable, but only if they are applied, so let me pragmatically clarify this idea.
One area in which this notion of minimizing energy usage is in our worldly awareness. Our minds want to do as little work as possible and so will try to take as many shortcuts as possible to do so. While this serves us well in many situations, that our minds are so heavily dependent on heuristics is also to our detriment. Besides for the fact that it is undermines our rationality, our natural tendency to resort to heuristics limits the broadness of our perception. This is a poignant realization because it suggests much of our understanding and interaction with the world may be incorrectly founded and strongly linked to factors in our environment.
To be sure, we are autonomous beings, capable of executive control over our minds and bodies. Yet, broader processes operating in our subconscious shape our general mindset and tendencies of perception. We can get so immersed in the world around us that our lazy brains have no reason to consider what alternate physical and intellectual realities look like, what the world beyond our microcosm looks like.
It is a curious thought experiment to start brainstorming what these alternate realities would feel like, both of our own internal mental structure and the structure of our external physical life. Once we have mapped out the set of our possible lives, we have what to use in order to get out of the possible local maximum of our own life and move to a more global maximum. It is also a perspective broadening exercise.
