Some Thoughts on the Shortcomings of Stoicism.

In September of 2024, I stepped back from writing weekly to clear my mind. It was the right move, and I’m glad to be back writing again. Writing is a form of meditation for me. I don’t feel I’m an exceptionally gifted writer, but I enjoy it, and spending more time working on things I enjoy is deeply important to me. I’ve found that whenever I’ve gotten into a rut in life, I’m out of alignment with intrinsically working on things I enjoy. It might seem selfish, but I don’t think it is possible to be our best selves without deeply engaging in that sense of play, curiosity, and joy that comes from autotelic pursuits. I don’t think it’s our purpose to lord over others and force behaviors. Instead, if we truly live in accordance with our values, the world would be a better place. Imagine if we could fill our days working on what deeply interested us without worrying about getting ahead or upward mobility. In Epicurean philosophy, this is known as ataraxia, or the katastematic pleasure of the mind. I’ve also written about this based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on autotelic pursuits.

I know that studying the stoics is quite the topic these days, and while stoic thought is worth exploring, I think it misses two significant points:

• The pursuit of Stoic ideals doesn’t ever deal with the systemic dysfunction they came out of.

• Stoicism seems to lack an appreciation for play and joy for its own sake.

On the first point. I think stoicism overemphasizes inner virtual and resilience at the expense of understanding one’s place in the larger social structure. Imagine you are a soldier who must be brave in battle, fighting for your country and putting the good of others before yourself. Stoicism is a fantastic framework for honor, valor, and overcoming adversity. Still, it does a terrible job of asking the deeper question of “Should I be participating in this in the first place?” Stoicism doesn’t ask the soldier to question, “Is this war justified?” or “Why are we fighting in the first place?” Instead, it is a framework meant to provide guidance within a system accepted largely without question. Marcus Areleas is a thoughtful writer in his writing in Meditations, yet he was still an emperor, utterly reliant on the Roman Empire’s force and coercion to maintain his power. By contrast, Epicurus discouraged political involvement because seeking power separates us from our more authentic, more joyful selves. Epicureans largely withdrew from the larger society to form small communities of shared values called “gardens” where folks could support one another in an environment of trust and respect. The types of folks who seek out the highest levels of power seem to be deeply unhappy to me (if they were happy, would they need to seek power?). Stoicism does a fantastic job of framing honor and valor, but it does a terrible job of questioning whether someone should be involved in the first place.

On the second point, Emma Goldman said it best: “If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.” In Stoicism, pleasure and play are treated as “indifferents,” things not central to a meaningful life. In Epicurean thought, maximizing ataraxia and minimizing pain is our highest goal. In doing so, each of us lives our best lives so that we can love and support those around us. What I find so powerful about living in alignment with these values is that it forces these more profound questions.

I’ve been researching both Epicurean philosophy and Metamodernism in my spare time, so you’ll be seeing more on the topic as I learn and grow in my knowledge. If you are interested, I recently had a fun conversation with Robert Kelley on the subject of metamodernism, which still has my mind turning.

I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to writing weekly again (just yet), but you should expect to see more stuff on this substack as I grow and learn in public.

Long-term Free thinking is more important than short-term correctness.

Being correct is boring.
Being correct is safe.
Being correct misses the point.

It is only possible to find new paradigms of correctness through free thought, unencumbered by pre-optimization of correctness.

It might be alluring to obsess over correctness, but obsessing over correctness is short-sighted. Your correctness is correct until it’s not, at which point you are now incorrect, which defeats the purpose of trying to be correct in the first place.

If your short-term motivation is to maintain correctness, you will miss out on more interesting forms of correctness later.

Free thinking allows one to explore the domain of thought that may or may not be correct, acknowledging that your assumptions about what you feel is correct might be wrong. Free-thinking is living comfortably in a superposition of thoughts in which correctness may collapse from the wave function. Free thinking is about permitting yourself to say, “I don’t know, yet,” and even be presumptuous enough to say, “I don’t think others know either; I think we still need to work on this idea a bit more before we can know.”

This is important because, throughout history, we’ve seen that radical thinkers are the ones who help us break out of old, comfortable, and “correct” ways of thinking that turn out to be incorrect.

One of my favorite examples of this is that Ancient astronomy (and astrology) was remarkably accurate in predicting celestial events. The movements of the planets, solar and lunar eclipses, the calendar, and more. And yet, none of these fantastic achievements, in their complex algorithms, understood the more profound truth of a heliocentric solar system. Heliocentric and geocentric models created algorithms that predicted outcomes, but only the heliocentric view led to a more valuable generalization for the observable universe.

Sometimes, wild ideas end up leading to endless cascading realizations:

• What if our sun were just another star? led to…

• What if our solar system is just another solar system? led to…

• What if our galaxy is just another galaxy? led to…

• What if our universe is just another universe? …and on and on

What is essential is that all of these thoughts are allowed to dance on the edge of delusion. Many of our free-thinking thoughts will never be correct, they will be wildly wrong, and they will never lead us to more profound truths, but only by allowing free thinking to flourish can we discover new perspectives about the universe that break us out of our shared delusion of correctness.

We aren’t rational beings; we are rationalizers. When we teach kids about the solar system, they “get it” so young, while the scientific and religious establishments of the time vehemently resisted such notions as dangerous and misguided.

How many ideas are perceived that way today but will eventually become “obviously true” later? How many ideas are accepted as truth but will be remembered as dangerously archaic?

Slowing things down.

I have big plans for Functionally Imperative, but to pull them off, I’ve decided to slow things down to reach my goals. That might sound counterintuitive, but stick with me. I’m making some changes here.

Sixteen months ago, I committed to posting weekly (or donate to the Flat Earth Society). Seventy-one weekly posts later, I’m bringing this commitment to a close. I initially challenged myself to start producing creative output on a regular cadence because, before that, I just kept putting it off. I’ve accomplished my goal here. Not only have I not missed a week, but I now have a new weekly project, Book Overflow.

What is inspiring this change? Why now? A few reasons. First, I’ve been reading Cal Newport’s phenomenal book Slow Productivity. In the book, he advocates three core principles:

1. Do fewer things.

2. Work at a natural pace.

3. Obsess over quality

To reach my goals for Functionally Imperative, I’ll be changing up how I engage here and on my YouTube channel. I’ll continue developing FuncImp to explore the relationship between play, creativity, and autotelic pursuits. The new focus I’ll be introducing allows me to dive into topics deeper, interview more amazing people, and take my time to build out my work in a way focused on quality over quantity.

My first step is to “do fewer things,” and while I deeply enjoy writing, removing the weekly commitment to ship both this newsletter and Book Overflow will allow me to spend my time playing and exploring my work at a more natural pace while obsessing over quality for FuncImp.

So, if you see less frequent posts here, don’t worry; not a penny has gone to the Flat Earth Society. Instead, I’m setting my goals higher and slowing down a bit to give more room to grow.

Links this week

• Adrienne Braganza (author) Reflects on "Looks Good To Me" (Book Overflow)

• We wrapped up our discussion of Looks Good To Me (Book Overflow)

• David Graeber discussing 5 types of bullshit jobs (classic that I’d seen years ago but rewatched this week)

• Solid AIA interview: Why I'm an anarchist | Sophie Scott-Brown

• In 2004 I stumbled across a HALCALI album randomly in a Japanese record shop. I’ve been a fan ever since. I recently showed GiriGiri Surf Rider to my 9-year-old

What if the universe is pseudo-random?

True Randomness in the universe is widely accepted in physics, and understandably so. In Quantum mechanics, the wave function is thought to be fundamentally probabilistic (meaning the outcome of a wave function collapse is unknowable before it happens), leading many to conclude that the universe is fundamentally probabilistic and non-deterministic. This may be how the universe behaves, but what if that is wrong? What if true randomness is a cleverly hidden illusion?

Computers and pseudo-randomness

Computers are deterministic machines. Given a set of fixed inputs and an algorithm, a computer will generate the same outputs. But what about random number generation? Aren’t random numbers used all the time for everything from video games to secure bank transactions? The trick is that computers are incapable of generating true randomness. Instead, we use pseudo-random number generators (PRNG) to give us sufficiently random-looking data. In statistics, PRNGs are commonly fed a known seed, which is a starting number that will provide deterministic random-looking data (the same “random” data will be generated every time). This allows for computer models that require random data to operate in a testable way while still holding the properties required for random inputs.

In more security-focused applications of PRNGs, we have what are known as Cryptographically Secure PRNG (CSPRNG), which are known to be good if the output of a CSPRNG and “true randomness” are indistinguishable to an observer. These CSPRNGs also have another feature: they are one-way functions, meaning that given a known output, you cannot find the hidden input (the seed). This is known as “one way” because, given a seed and the PRNG algorithm, one can quickly generate the output. However, going the reverse direction from output to known input is impossible (the data can only flow one way). What is unique about CSPRNG and other secure PRNGs is that how the seed is derived is hidden from the user. These tools use sources of entropy to feed the CSPRNG data in a way that is not reproducible to an outside observer. The thing is, though, if you did have a way of understanding how the hidden variables were generated, you could generate the output data in a deterministic way.

Bell’s Theorem, Non-locality, and Bohmian Mechanics

In 1935, Einstein, Podlsky, and Rosen wrote a paper later known as the EPR Paradox. This paper hypothesized that instead of a probabilistic universe, there must be “local hidden variables,” that is, variables unknown to the observer that pre-determine the outcomes. Namely, this was meant to address the behavior of “spooky action at a distance.” The Spooky action is that if two particles are entangled, acting on one particle has an instantaneous effect on the other particle outside of the causal speed limit of the universe (the speed of light). They argued that there must be some hidden “locality” that reconciles this spooky action. While the EPR paper was necessary in pointing out issues in the bounds of quantum mechanics, it was incorrect.

In 1965, John Bell formulated Bell’s Theorem (also known as Bell inequality), a way of addressing the question of whether hidden variables, as proposed by the EPR Paradox, exist. What is fascinating is that Bell’s Theorem was eventually able to be tested in the lab and proved that local hidden variables do not explain spooky action at a distance. How this was interpreted varied widely, and this was seemingly a big win for the probabilistic universe camp. Maybe particles do live in a “superposition” until “observed,” and the wave function collapses in an unknowable and random way. But maybe EPR was only partially wrong. Maybe there are hidden variables, but they aren’t local.

In physics, the locality is the principle that things are only influenced by other things in their surroundings. Locality is bound by the “causal limit” of transmitting information (the speed of light). A unit of information transmitted from one particle to another relies on the causal limits of locality to interact with one another. But Bell’s Theorem proved that particles can (and do) interact non-locally, meaning they interact outside the bounds of the speed of light. The wave function collapse of one entangled particle instantaneously impacts the wave function collapse of another, regardless of distance. Some odd and exciting models could still hold for deterministic behavior: non-local hidden variables and bohmian mechanics.

I love the idea of Bohmian mechanics, also known as pilot wave theory. What I love about this theory is that it preserves discrete particles and velocities, but they are guided by a “pilot wave” that evolves according to quantum mechanics. It relies on non-local hidden variables to reconcile these characteristics and it leads us all the way back to the beginning here: a Bohmian universe is fundamentally deterministic but functionally probabilistic due to the nature of non-local hidden variables.

Does that remind you of anything? It sounds an awful lot like the CSPRNG using a hidden seed and source of entropy. What if our universe is one big one-way function and randomness isn’t really truly random but pseudo-random based on a set of non-local hidden variables and initial conditions hidden from those living inside of the universe?

Now, let’s loop this back to our definition of a CSPRNG. If True randomness is an illusion and instead a cleverly hidden Universal PRNG function itself, then our definition of a CSPRNG should be modified. The output of a CSPRNG is indistinguishable from the Universal PRNG to an outside observer.

Given a set of initial conditions, existence may be deterministic but functionally probabilistic due to the unknowable state of its hidden variables. Maybe, just maybe, we live in a Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random number generated universe.

But, of course, that begs the question: where did the seed come from? That’s the topic for another day, but Roger Penrose’s concept of an Aeon in Conformal Cyclic Cosmology offers a pretty compelling seed if you ask me.

Notable Links

• We interviewed Stephen Wolfram about ChatGPT (Book Overflow)

• LGTM book discussion (Book Overflow)

• You might (not) be crazy; your phone (maybe) was listening to you for ads

• How am I just learning about racer trash?

• If System of a Down wrote Wannabe by the Spice Girls

• Cinamastix on the aesthetics of the “sunlight horror” film Midsommar