A ceiling detail in Strängnäs cathedral.
Engrams
How does it work that we remember things? If I tell you to remember the number 6, and you do, how exactly does your brain achieve that?
The standard answer is that the physical representation of memory, the engram, is encoded in the synapses between neurons, while each neuron behaves mechanically, aggregating the inputs into firing an output once an activation threshold is reached. In this model each neuron does not store information.
It turns out though that there is experimental evidence that individual neuron can indeed do just that, remember things, for example a certain time-span. I just read this interview which talks about this paper. See also this Twitter thread.
The provocative thesis is that there is some, very much not understood yet, molecular mechanism inside neurons that encodes information directly within a single cell. Somewhat analogous to how DNA encodes information, but with different purpose and coding between molecules and information. Our current situation may be similar to how inheritance was mysterious a hundred years ago, until the structure of DNA was discovered and understood.
As usual, when a small group goes against the scientific mainstream, it is quite impossible to have a well-founded opinion as a layman. But even if the experiment that shows memory in a single neuron eventually gets debunked, we have learned something. If however it turns out to be right, that the whole idea to look for the engram between cells instead of within them is a mistake, then this will quite likely be one of the most exciting scientific revolutions in modern times!
Do you remember the number I asked you to above? No matter if you do or not, you have no direct knowledge why that is the case. Introspection does not help. Finding out through experiment is our only hope.
I almost forgot: The paper linked above is by scientists from Lund, Sweden! So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a "local" Nobel prize in the future.
Added 2021-05-05: Another article about it.
Scout Julia
I had seen her TED talk before and had noticed her name pop up in my timeline on Twitter from time to time. But I admit I did not really have Julia Galef's work on my radar until recently, when I added her podcast to my rotation. So far it has been very good and I intend to check-out the large backlog eventually.
But first, I'll dive into the book that she just released: The Scout Mindset. See her Twitter for teasers, or listen to her being interviewed about it here.
I did not mention it in my Star Trek rewatch, but Julia is certainly right that Spock is not very logical, and quite annoying.
P.S.: See her explain Scout Mindset through activist examples in this video.
Push-Ups
I have never been good at doing push-ups. Upper body strength in general has never been my thing and I have always preferred low- to medium-intensity exercise, endurance like running.
However, I recently had the idea to change that and I remembered that logging progress helped me more than ten years ago to get into running. Even though I no longer do that (I wear my old GPS clock as a watch, but never turn it on when I go running), keeping tabs might just work as a motivation-hack once more. For added effect, I hereby make this commitment public, which is something that I hear people claim also keeps you from abandoning the routine.
Thus, here is the plot of max and median set sizes, and total number of push-ups every day, for the last ten days:
I will occasionally post a plot like this with updated numbers. The script that makes the plot is here.
Sympathetic Reading
Whenever we encounter some statement or proposition, we cannot help but react to it. This is often automatic, sometimes even subconscious. The kind of reaction we get depends to some extent on what is being said, certainly, but not only. To a larger extent our own mental state is more crucial.
How well does the statement fit into our current world model? How unexpected is it? How flattering or insulting is it? What is the intention of the speaker?
There is considerable freedom in interpretation, but it is a kind of mental freedom that is easy to overlook. The difference between adopting a positive reading or a negative one of someone's argument is huge. It is the difference between strawmanning and steelmanning, and the difference between getting offended and curious.
I find that, with a little practice, it becomes possible to take almost nothing personally and to notice my own reactions a bit more clearly, which lets me choose the direction, to some extent. The most sympathetic reading of what is being said is a good default to strive for, I believe. Not because I want to appear "nice", although that might be a welcome side-effect, but because it actually is less mental effort and frees me from being caught up in ruminations about some possible negative subtext that my brain manages to notice, or invent.
Star Trek, The Movies
Star Trek. Hearing that name makes people's eyes either sparkle, or roll. Unlike Star Wars it never became fully mainstream and Trekkies are still considered to be quite dorky. I was born too late to have a sentimental relation to the original series, but Next Generation with Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard had 11-year-old me glued to the TV every afternoon. I loved it!
Ten years or so later, I re-watched it in English, instead of the German dubbing. This made it much better with respect to the voices, of course, but the magic that I remembered was gone. Some of the episodes were quite bad and it hurt a bit to realize that. Yes, I also watched DS9 and Voyager, but only half-heartedly, and never became a fan.
Another doubling of lifetime later (🙄) I recently found myself, for unclear reasons, intrigued by the idea to watch the Star Trek films once more. I think I had seen them all at least once, but never together and I barely remembered most of them. So I did, and regret nothing!
I: The Motion Picture. This is a very slow film and I almost pressed the button to speed it up. But I was surprised by how good the special effects still look today. I had this mental image of the old Enterprise being just crappy and ugly - not any more. 4/5
II: The Wrath of Khan. This one has its moments, but I didn't like it as much as some do. In fact, I have already forgotten most of it again. Still, 3/5.
III: The Search for Spock. This was fun, mostly because of Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon. The solemn parts on Vulcan and Kirk having a son had me looking at my watch, however. 3/5
IV: The Voyage Home. Even more fun than the last! Yes, time-travel is a cheap trick and can go horribly wrong story-wise, but it did not bother me here. Scotty putting complex formulae onto an 80s computer screen by pressing three buttons made me laugh out loud. 4/5
V: The Final Frontier. Yeah, this is everything as bad as its reputation. All the films are much more enjoyable, if you manage to have as much fun at the film as with it. This is especially true for this one. 1/5
VI: The Undiscovered Country. More serious in tone and with lots of pink CGI-blood. The ending is a bit of a mess, but overall very watchable. Interesting to see the Klingons change, here they are much closer to TNG than to TOS. 3/5
VII: Generations. Wow. I had vague good memories from this one, but it is as bad as the popular verdict suggests. It just doesn't make any sense! I noticed several occasions when CGI-shots were re-used in the earlier films and here we are shown the exact same explosion of the Klingon ship as in the last film. 2/5
VIII: First Contact. The borg are a favourite story-line from TNG and they make good enemies here, too. We get to see them take over a brand-new ship, the Enterprise-E. Getting rid of the large neck and making it smaller than the previous one are good choices - she looks good! The scenes on time-travel Earth are very light-hearted and if you accept the quirky humour, they work nicely to contrast the dire situation on the ship. Overall my favourite of the bunch, 5/5. In case it is not clear yet, ratings are relative within this list, I am not saying that First Contact is among the best films I have ever seen.
IX: Insurrection. This one I vaguely remembered as quite boring, but I did not dislike it this time around. The intrigue is fine, the villains are cliché baddies that look the part. Even the romance, often the worst part of any Star Trek, did not bother me. Don't get me wrong, a masterpiece it is not. 3/5
X: Nemesis. Well, I cannot quite put my finger on why, but this was not very good. The central question of identity and personality, and how much of it is "nature versus nurture" is a long-standing and important one, but how it was handled here felt shallow and stale. The final battle was not too bad, but Data's death was rushed. An unworthy finale, 2/5.
But maybe it is wrong to call it that. After all, they made Picard last year, the series that brought "the band" back together. I have seen it, but it did not leave a lasting impression. They say there will be a second season which I do not anticipate much, I just learned about it from the Wikipedia article myself. I will probably watch it anyway, in another vain attempt to get the nostalgia flowing.
