My thoughts

In recent months my work took me to places that were far away from where I live. The experience was fantastic, and I am very grateful for such opportunities.

There is one thing I would like to mention. Having so many hours to spend on a plane I decided to watch some movies. I am not sure whether is age, or …age but I came out of those many hoursenclosed in the cabin of a plane a big fan of Disney movies.

Let me review some of the few jewels I enjoyed:

Ferdinand: let us be clear, I am from Spain and I love bullfights! But I loved the movie. I had never thought of the life’s perspective a bull might have. I know for a fact that bulls are violent, extremely hierarchical (someday I will describe the “toro abochornado”) that 20% of them die in fights before they reach 5 years of age. In any case, the movie was about being in charge of your life, by making your reasoned choices (it sounds much like Marcus Aurelius, doesn’t it?). It brings us back to Epictetus “Freedom is the name of virtue: Slavery, of vice…. None is a slave whose acts are free”. The beauty of the movie is that you get to choose your own life by your choices, you do not have to do what others tell you to do, what tradition tells you to do. At the same time, your own choices force you to be alone sometimes. Is life as described in the movie? Yes and no. The wonderful end is not what happens in real life… not all the time, but the challenges and need to fight for your own ideas is. It is a wonderful movie, and I finished it with a smile.

Coco: this is a fantastic movie, go and watch it! The story of a Mexican boy … yeah… multicultural! But what makes it so great is that through the local forms (in the end culture is just necessary noise for human needs) it appeals to basic and shared human needs: freedom to pursue what makes you happy and…love (in this case in the form of family). It is beautifully done, the music is great but overall it is a great movie about values, how family can be a casket and how despite all its imperfections family is a basic pillar of our lives. It also has a very interesting approach to remembrance and permanence. When no one remembers you… is it at that moment when you really die? Is that the reason why we all look for a place in history books? Is permanence being remembered with love or a smile in someone’s face, or in a heartbeat out of place of someone we loved or that loved us? Watch it, please!

Zootopia: Another great movie. Animals live in a place where you can be anything, isn’t that great? It is not completely true but it is a fantastic goal! That being said, things are not easy… and you have to work for your place in life. In that journey you have to learn to be flexible and understanding of other people’s views and ways. And it is very funny!

So if you want to enjoy for a while and have a positive approach to life, even if for an hour … Disney!

Disclosure: I have no positions in the Disney stock, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 100,000 hours. On top of that, I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. Disney did not give me a dime for it. In fact, my wife is planning a trip to Orlando ;-(

 

 

 

 

Executive summary: This is just a very short reflection… and I do not have a Rolex.

There is fascination for watches in some people, frequently among men. It is believed that it is the “jewelry” of men. Let me share some thoughts about that.

A friend of mine recently told me that an acquaintance of him had sold his Rolex, he did not want it anymore. A very successful businessman who travels on a regular basis from the US to Europe and Asia. In one of his trips, while in a high-end hotel, someone taking care of him was wearing a Rolex. He asked if it was a legit one, and … it was. He felt part of a crowd, a feeling unbearable to him.

That short story got me thinking… first I do not have a Rolex. I belong to that massive crowd who do not have one. Then I thought, what is it with watches? Are they marks of the breeds we belong to? Do we, human beings, so desperately need that feeling of uniqueness? Are we not contradicting ourselves? Those moments when we feel more real, more human come to us when we feel connected with other human beings, in a state of flow with them.

Furthermore, why do we use watches? What does a watch measure?  I think we talked about the measure of time as movement. Time only exists if there is some change from before to after, from potency to act. A watch, not even a Rolex, does not measure the before and after. A watch with its tick tock is alien to changes or meaning. A watch is a beautiful piece of metal that measures nothing of relevance.

Why do we “measure” what we cannot grasp or control? Time is out of boundaries for us, entropy is unidirectional and there is nothing we can do about it. The legend attributed to St Augustine recounts that he met a boy at the seaside who was running back and forth between the sea and the pool with a seashell of water, what are you doing asked St Augustine: “I’m emptying the sea into this pool!” to which St Augustine answered “Son, you can’t do that!”

In summary, we attempt to measure something we just cannot measure, with a machine that underlines our uniqueness. However, we are more human when our uniqueness disappears and connect at a deep level with other human beings.

I will drink something, I may understand it by the end of it (the bottle).

Note to self: Entropy is just a fancy word for decay, growing disorder, death. Next time do not be so pretentious with the new words you just learnt.

I am tired of people saying, “you show real passion for your work” or “he/she does not seem to have passion for his/her job”. What is all this nonsense about “passion for your job”? and what does it have to do with work? Are we lobotomized? Yes, we are.

Hey… why are you so annoyed? Relax!

Smell the roses…blow the candles…smell the roses…blow the candles…twenty more times please! Ok, I am relaxed now.

Let me go to the dictionary first. Passion is defined as a “strong and barely controllable emotion”.

So… what is your point?  You will see…

If we start dissecting the elements of passion the first aspect that draws our attention is strength. This is something measurable, it suggests a somewhat linear characteristic of the concept at hand, as if we could have 7 pounds 8 ounces of strength or 51 feet of strength but never a yes/no answer for strength. There is an inherent concept of finitude or limitation, it is something measurable as it develops on a scale. The evaluation of strength is always relative to other parameters, a specific outcome or the gap between what is and what is expected. This concept is in opposition to the boundlessness of presence or absence.

The second element of the definition is “barely controllable”, this sounds like the Millennium Falcon at light speed chasing the Emperor and his death’s star. Something beyond our reasonable means to manage, something that puts us immediately at the mercy of the circumstances surrounding us.

The third element of the definition involves emotion. Defined as “a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others”, this is a state of mind defined by the external elements of one’s surroundings both physical and spiritual. Emotion is defined by levers that lay beyond our control; you are just a byproduct of a specific combination of circumstances. You could argue that your mood is under your control, but that is not totally true if you believe in biological psychiatry and read the sign in 72^nd Street and Broadway Av in the Upper West, New York “Depression is a flaw in chemistry not character”.

So, we define a person having passion for his or her work as something of value; and it so happens that passion is something limited in scope, difficult or impossible to manage and absolutely outside our control mechanisms. Why would anyone want to have such a combination of bad actors?

What does it mean to do a good job? What is the moral contract for a job? Is it different for a doctor a pilot or a mason?

The reason we should do a good job is because we have a moral commitment to ourselves. As Augustine says “we become what we love”, and it is through our commitment that we come to love something. That is what makes us all equals at work, whether a pilot a doctor or a janitor we all have to make the moral commitment to do our best, put the effort and talent to do our best. Once that commitment is made, the job is different for everyone but those are the less relevant details.

Does it mean we all do the job we love above any other thing on earth? Of course not, sometimes we will do a job to put food on the table and our love will be in a hobby for example. But our moral commitment to do our best will allow us to draw pride and happiness from a job well done, and then we can enjoy our other interests.

So, let us do away with passion for work, and bring back a moral commitment to work that will make us happy and energetic.

 

Reading list

Confessions by St Augustine, published almost 17 hundred years ago and still in print

The road to character by D Brooks, 2015

 

Today I will share with you a little thing that happened this morning. It was one of those Mondays… my day was full of meetings. However, I had to take my son Alejandro to the doctor before running back to the office, taking a teleconference while driving, joining another one the moment I arrived at the office and continue the rest of the day. All good, only thankful to have such opportunities everyday!

But before all that happened, we payed a visit to Dr Palmo. A seasoned pediatrician who takes care of Alejandro from birth. We were on time and as we arrived were taken to the doctor’s office. The nurse took his measures, height check, weight check, eyes check, audiometry check, all the 20 questions as per guidelines of the visit at year 5

Does he follow complex instructions? No, he does not care if you ask him to do stuff, even if it is easy

Can he fart loud? Yes

Can he count to 20? Yes, even with his eyes closed

blah blah blah, and then blood work… first tears

and then Dr Palmo

He greeted Alejandro by his name, did a high five but… Dr Palmo put his bold head instead of his hand. My son was laughing really hard, he was in a good mood. Dr Palmo then proceeded to do a physical with all the elements of a full physical, making the exploration of the abdomen like he was tickling, asking him to breath making a big noise at expiration so that he could have a deep inspiratory effort and on and on. I was there holding my son in awe of medicine as a mix of art and science. Furthermore, when Dr Palmo finished the exploration he hugged him and gave him a kiss. And all of that was absolutely true, there was not a smidgeon of posture! We then discussed lab work, next vaccination schedule, development milestones. The whole book!

In this day and age, where we tend to Instagram and facebook our lives as if they were Super Bowl commercials, it was a privilege to see first hand a real old school visit to the doctor. I feel really lucky to have him as Alejandro’s doctor. On top of that he has all the credentials required and is a physician in a very respected medical institution. Thank you Dr Palmo!

The day started fantastic, this was not a little thing !

 

This is a long uninformative title. I will try to make sense of it, let me know if I succeed.

Executive summary: We need more math (mathematical models of disease) and good thinking math in medicine, not “after the fact math” to deal with the mess we have created.

Early in the nineteenth century Laplace’s Demon was the first time someone articulated determinism. If someone knew the exact position and composition of all beings in the universe for a single moment and submitted these data to analysis, it would be possible to predict the future without fail, as “nothing becomes uncertain”.

Tversky and Kahneman studied the psychological underpinnings of human decision making. With their “prospect theory,” they argued that people are not as calculating as economic models assume. Instead, they said, people repeatedly make errors in judgment that can be predicted and categorized. Daniel Kahneman used a dual-system theoretical framework to explain why our judgments and decisions often do not conform to formal notions of rationality. System 1 consists of thinking processes that are intuitive, automatic, experience-based, and relatively unconscious. System 2 is more reflective, controlled, deliberative, and analytical. Judgments influenced by System 1 are rooted in impressions arising from mental content that is easily accessible. System 2, on the other hand, monitors or provides a check on mental operations and overt behavior—often unsuccessfully.

Ok, I am lost here… what is your point? My point is that even human behavior, an extremely complex system with many variables at play, can be studied and structured to predict judgements and choices.

Next on my list comes a movie… ok a movie based on a book “Moneyball” (2011). The central premise of Moneyball is that wisdom of baseball insiders is subjective and not accurate. Statistics used to evaluate players had an inherently old view of the game. Before new metrics were introduced to baseball, teams were dependent on the skills of their scouts to evaluate players. Rigorous statistical analysis demonstrated that on base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success, and these qualities were cheaper on the market than more historically valued qualities.

By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics were competitive with teams such as the NY Yankees. This approach brought the A’s to the playoffs in 2002 and 2003. Another example of how the effort to understand a system, and the ability to model it can produce better forecasts.

Let us go to another completely different field, commodities trading. Ray Dalio, the extremely successful hedge fund manager, started in the commodities business back in the 70s. He developed a model to link cattle, chickens, and hogs and their food (grain). He could project how much meat would come to the market and how much corn and soy meal would be consumed. Seemingly, by looking at how much acreage of corn was planted and applying the rain forecast we could guess how much grain would be available and at what time. This is a very smart and simple way to understand the production machine, with all its levers. Being able to understand how much output there will be with these specific set of inputs (rain, time, acreage planted) gives you a competitive advantage over your fellow traders. If you understand the machine, your model will be able to forecast the output with a specific set of inputs. Is this Laplace’s demon again?

How does it all tie together with the need for more math, reasonable and honest math, in medicine? The current paradigm is basically based on rolling a dice and praying (yes, scientists also pray… and they pray a lot before unblinding a trial) the only interference with the system is the drug under study. The key is to randomize patients to something or nothing, assuming “ceteris paribus” that if we see a difference in the outcome it is due to the drug under study. Though it is not a horrible logic it is fraught with faults. We assume the disease is homogeneous across all patients, but we are not sure so we run complex statistical models where we adjust for a myriad of variables…just to make sure. Even if we are successful we frequently find safety issues or interactions when the drug is used in real patients with more complex comorbidities. Where is the root cause of all these? Coming back to Donald Rumsfeld “… there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.” Should we not try to diminish those? Are not these “unknown unknowns” the most dangerous ones?

My proposal is to start with a humble approach. We know some aspects of the disease but we ignore the inner workings of it. We invest countless hours and talent in describing specific aspects, steps of the disease but we never dare to put together an operational model of the disease. Our animal models focus on specific elements we think are relevant, but they are always a remote approximation to what happens in a real patient. That is why there are so many results in animal models that do not match what happens in real patients. However, we continue to hammer such models in our decision making process when we select a drug to pursue its clinical development.

We need to start building operational models of the disease at hand before we start any plan to advance cures, only understanding the relevant elements of such models will we be able to design better cures. By building operational models of the disease we will discover aspects of the disease that have not been addressed or are assumed to be true without any proof. Even though many articles and medical books contain beautiful graphic displays of the disease physiopathology, none of those models of the disease include any information on the relevant (“sine qua non”) pathways of the disease and epiphenomena of such pathological process. None of such models consider temporal sequences of events, its relevance or the strength of the associations in the different steps of the pathological processes. None of such models include any non-linearity in the description of such events, and we know by now that biological systems tend to be non-linear and only in severe pathological states turn into failed but linear predictable models.

Once we have a disease model, we can check if it can forecast results (outcomes) of certain treatments. If not, we should revisit the model and use such data to improve it. This will be a positive feedback process. If we have a sophisticated model we can evaluate outcomes by manipulating certain elements of it. That way we might be able to identify future treatments or design combination treatments.

It is worth the effort!

Reading list

The undoing project by Michael Lewis 2017

Principles by Ray Dalio 2017

Thinking, fast and slow by D Kahneman 2011

Money ball , sorry I just watched the movie

The logic of scientific discovery by Karl Popper 1959

Known and Unknown: A memoir by Donald Rumsfeld 2011

El Quijote, always a good read

As most guides to successful business presentations and elevator pitches recommend you should be succinct and clear. My point is this: We are missing personal ethics in this day and age. There you have it!

We can safely say that in the last 70 plus years the size of government has increased tremendously in the developed world, and in the rest of the world also.

Just to use few data points, in the US the government budget in 1950 represented a little over 23% of the GDP, 27% in 1960, 29% in 1970, 32%in 1980, 34% in 1990 and is 36% in 2017. In 2016, Governments in the EU have budgets that represent 56% of GDP in France, 44% in Germany, 42% in UK and Spain. Between 1 in 3 dollars or 1 in 2 euros are appropriated by the government in such countries.

The government takes more and more of our money, this has three major impacts on our society:

• The first influence it has in our economy. Decisions on economic matters, should I work more hours or not? should I make this investment or not? Should I work for this company or for the other?, change depending on how much it costs you to make a profit, be it in monetary terms or otherwise.
• The vast amount of resources the government appropriates from individual citizens produces another problem, those resources have to be allocated (euphemism for “spend”). This represents the second influence on our economy, the government can pick winners and losers by awarding contracts to individual companies.
• There is a third influence of the government in the economy and that is the shaping of personal behavior. Even though this has nothing to do with immediate economic production it is the most relevant and dangerous epiphenomena of the interventionism a behemoth government has on its citizens.

How is it that changes behavior? The first decision government makes is where the vast resource it appropriates come from. More and more, due to a weak political class more interested in old class warfare than in telling citizens what good citizenship means, a smaller portion of the population pays the vast majority of taxes (which is the main source of government revenue). In 2012, the top 1 percent of the filers paid 37.8% of all income taxes, whereas the bottom 90 percent combined paid 30.2%. In 2015, it was estimated that 45.3% of American households paid no federal individual income tax.

You started talking about ethics and just vomited numbers for half a page! You are right, but I am building my argument, so bear with me!

We have a system where a great portion of our income, which comes for our work (sweat and tears), is appropriated by government (an amorphous entity, massively powerful and difficult to identify) and at the same time those resources are allocated by a logic that escapes general understanding of the public. But only a portion of the population contributes to such entity, and is getting smaller, whereas the vast majority benefits from “the system” (as I said before it is an amorphous entity). This set-up is the perfect recipe to milk the system. It is on the best interest of such political class (an interest group by itself) to have a massive government, that makes them the deciders, who wins and who loses. Such decisions are made based on a very nebulous set of principles that are summarized in “political correctness” and a vague idea of resource redistribution that inherently assumes the economic system is unfair.  As a result of such unfairness the “wrongs” of the system have to be made “right”, and the government is the one to do it.

These ideas have led governments to appropriate more and more resources, as described before and have taken away the responsibility of their own lives to many individuals and layers of society. There is always some wrong a politician can find to make it right, and it is never an issue of individual personal responsibility. It is ”The system” which is to blame. By taking away personal responsibility and replacing it with a government action, there is a “de facto” outsourcing of morality. It is the government who based on some vague definition of morality (rights and wrongs without any specific moral logic) takes away the individual and most fundamental action of freedom, morality.

This principle is not only intellectually despicable, it is also morally corrupt. As J Dorn states “in a free society people are entitled to what they own, not to what others own”. It is interesting that this is a recurrent topic under different circumstances. In 1944, Hayek published “The road to serfdom” where he made the argument that there is a danger of tyranny that results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning. Nowadays, it is the size of government and the massive appropriation of resources that creates that risk of oppression, not the central planning. However, the results are the same an empowerment of the state over the individual.

 

References

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1950_2022USp_19s2li111mcn_F0t

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24

Hayek, F A (1944) The road to Serfdom

EL Quijote, always a good read

Estos son los libros que he leído este año y merecen ser reseñados, los demás no los he terminado, quizá por vago o porque no me gustaron. Este año he decidido hacer una breve nota nada más acabar el libro. Quizá acabe siendo un panegírico insoportable. Si es así …manda el mail a la basura, la vida es corta para perder el tiempo.

1- “Y yo que creía que todos los diplomáticos eran unos mamones” (2016) Autor: Inocencio Arias

Este libro fue un regalo de un grandísimo amigo. Le voy a dar la razón a Chencho. Es un libro ligero que se lee fácil. Tiene capítulos interesantes de cómo era la vida en la España de franco (que he oído contar). En general es un libro muy mesurado en sus juicios. Se echa en falta quizá un análisis más profundo de muchos hechos de estos últimos 40 años en los que él ha ocupado un asiento de primera fila. A la vez es un “rara avis” porque ha servido a su país con lealtad en distintos gobiernos. Eso no es frecuente en nuestro país, cainita por antonomasia. Solo por eso, ¡Gracias!

Las páginas del Real Madrid y otros regodeos de estilo ausente … se podían haber evitado. En definitiva, un libro interesante.

2- “Trabajos del reino” (2003) Autor: Yuri Herrera.

Me gusta leer autores nuevos y ver como evoluciona el lenguaje y los temas en escritores de hoy. Este es un escritor mejicano a caballo entre el español y el inglés. Es un relato algo mágico del mundo del narco. Está bien, sin más.

3- “Señales que precederán al fin de mundo “(2015) Autor: Yuri Herrera

Siguiendo con Yuri Herrera, este libro me recuerda de alguna manera al realismo mágico de los 60 …. “Pedro paramo”, o “Cien años de soledad” y no tiene nada que ver con ellos. Es un paisaje onírico, con referencias claras a la miseria de los inmigrantes indocumentados en USA, con momentos brillantes. Es curioso el español que utiliza …. es un idioma de frontera … de mezcolanza con el inglés (trocas y otros vocablos). Tiene dos momentos muy certeros al describir la levedad de la emoción de la vida al norte del rio, y al describir al emigrante (privilegiado como yo o no tanto). En definitiva, interesante, y un ejemplo de literatura en español de vanguardia … a veces me parece que estamos en España en una burbuja …… o a lo mejor me ha pasado ya como al soldado del libro.

4- “Las letras entornadas” (2015) Autor: Aramburu

Perdona que te tutee Aramburu, pero es que eres ya uno de los que me gustan sentar a la mesa. Ya te había leído hace tiempo en “Años lentos”, que me pareció estupendo, pero este libro me ha encantado. Es un lenguaje sobrio y directo. Tocas muchos temas, te agradezco todos los autores que me has descubierto y sobre todo ese juicio certero sobre nosotros mismos. Es más fácil juzgar desde fuera…. Pero es muy difícil hacerlo desde fuera, sin arrogancia, y con la humildad del que está dentro… así es como te ha salido. Es cierto que en España “el plebeyismo y la zafiedad en sucesivas variantes han encontrado, incluso en las capas cultas de la sociedad, terreno propicio desde hace varios siglos”

5-“Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work”  (2016) Autores: Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

Este libro es muy muy interesante, hacen un recorrido por todas las técnicas para alcanzar estados mentales superiores. Describen como la tecnología permite alcanzar esos estados de una manera más rápida y fácil, como un switch on-off. Este es un buen resumen de esa línea de investigación…. Creo que nos debemos montar en este vagón, con cuidado. ¡LECTURA NECESARIA!

6- “Los nuestros: cien vidas en la historia de España” (2000) Autor: F J Losantos.

Libro fantástico, es un recorrido por personajes españoles en un estilo periodístico, ágil, corto, fácil de leer. Dan ganas de saber más de estos personajes y de la historia de España. Muy recomendable

7- “Historia del franquismo “(2012) Autores: C Vidal y FJ Losantos.

Otro libro corto, claro y fácil de leer. Es curioso que, aunque viví los últimos momentos del régimen en el colegio no nos dieron mucha información sobre la etapa franquista. Aprendi muchas cosas en este libro.

8- “A Philosopher’s Notes: On Optimal Living, Creating an Authentically Awesome Life and Other Such Goodness” (2017) Autor: Brian Johnson

Un libro divertido, lleno de “buenismo” sincero. Buena lectura para un viaje en avión camino de una reunión que no te apetece nada.

9- “The author of himself. The life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki”

Esta es una autobiografía del crítico literario mas importante tras la segunda guerra mundial en la antigua República Federal Alemana. Ironías de la vida, el pope de la literatura alemana tras la guerra era un judío superviviente del gueto de Varsovia. Es un libro que comienza describiendo un mundo pasado, que desapareció repentinamente, sigue con la descripción de la tragedia (la vida en el gueto corta la respiración y transmite un miedo telúrico, primigenio, desasosegante) y acaba como la crónica de la posguerra en la que la necesidad de olvidar y obviar es necesaria para seguir adelante. ¡Pero el hilo conductor es la literatura alemana por la que el autor destila una no disimulada pasión, 300 páginas de gran literatura!

10-The declaration of independence. (1776)

Yo creo que es una lectura obligada para cualquiera que lea el periódico y tenga un mínimo interés en nuestra organización política.

11-“Common sense”  Autor: Thomas Paine (1775-76)

Técnicamente es un panfleto publicado en 1775-76 con el ánimo de argumentar la necesidad de independencia de las 13 colonias con respecto de gran Bretaña. Escueto y lleno de sentido común y grandes argumentos.

12-The Seventh Sense (2017) Autor: Joshua Cooper Ramo

Este es un libro que hay que leer (“must read” como dicen aquí). Es un periodista que ha vivido en china, ha asistido al nacimiento de esta sociedad de redes, es presidente de Kissinger associates y viaja por el mundo hablando con personas de poder y otras que tienen cosas que decir. Es un análisis muy profundo de los cambios que vienen, pero sobre todo del hecho que va a haber un gran cambio (estamos en el inicio de una nueva era) y las incertidumbres que ello acarrea. Lectura obligada. Mientras escribo esta nota, hay una polémica en internet entre Elon Musk y Zuckerberg. Tras leer el libro entiendo esa polémica mejor y me apunto a la visión de Elon Musk. Tenemos que tener cuidado con el mundo que vamos a crear, no hay vuelta atrás … pero debemos estar atentos.

13-The age of the unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo (2010)

Fue interesante leer este libro después de haber leído “el séptimo sentido”. La edad de lo impensable es un libro en el que las incógnitas son presentadas, de una manera muy interesante y articulada. El tema fundamental es que el paradigma en el cual el mundo occidental se ha basado en los últimos 60 anos, tras la segunda Guerra mundial está cambiando y no sabemos dónde vamos exactamente. Utiliza conceptos de sistemas no -lineales, muy interesantes y cercanos a lo que yo hice hace casi 20 años en uno de mis proyectos médicos (y tema que discutiré en uno de mis próximos blogs). La idea principal es que podemos aprender de muchos otros lugares para aplicar sistemas de predicción en nuestro comportamiento. En cualquier caso, acaba con unas generalidades vacuas que desmerecen respecto al resto del libro. Libro recomendable, especialmente junto con el anterior, esta es la pre-cuela.

14- Networks A very short introduction  Guido Caldarelli/Michelle Catanzano

Libro fantástico, una breve introducción a la teoría de redes para ignorantes como yo.

15- “Altered traits” (2017) Autores: Daniel Goleman y Richard Davidson

Desde que hace alrededor de 50 años, la tradición de meditación y auto -descubrimiento fue traída a occidente desde Asia de una manera masiva ha habido un gran debate sobre si es un montón de tonterías o hay algo profundo o transformador en esas prácticas. Mas allá de mis propias valoraciones, es te es un libro que será citado con frecuencia en el futuro por su rigor científico. Desde el advenimiento de técnicas de imagen como la resonancia magnética funcional, somos capaces de distinguir patrones de actividad en el cerebro y relacionarlos con actividades específicas. Este libro es un relato riguroso del estado de esas investigaciones y como la práctica de meditación produce distintos patrones de actividad cerebral. Así que… es cierto la practica continuada de meditación tiene impacto fisiológico en nuestro cuerpo y quizá puede explicar cambios de actitudes.

 

Today I pick up this theme because it is our basic premise when we go to bed (we will get up tomorrow) and our basic premise when we wake up (we will live another day). Well… except if you are a suicide bomber in a rush to meet your 72 houris or if you decide to apply a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Not funny!

The first principle of economics is that resources are limited. In our case, time is limited, and that is at the core of all our endeavors.

If we look at life expectancy at birth in roman times it was between 20-30 years, late medieval times in Great Britain you could expect to live to your 30s, and in the mid-50s of the twentieth century it went up to 48 years (worldwide). Today life expectancy at birth in developed countries is around 75 to 80 years.

We have a limited amount of time, that is a fact, but it might be said that time has been provided in abundance in our day and age. So, why are we in a rush to do things, see things, try things …?

In Aristotle, time is fundamentally linked to change and movement. He explains time in terms of change. Following that logic, if there is little change there is not much time, regardless of the measurement in days, months or years. Four hundred years later, Seneca talks in his book “On the shortness of life” about “it is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully” This follows the Aristotle logic of making time count through meaningful change. St Thomas Aquinas a thousand years later identifies the same concept in his first way. Things do move, change is passing from potency to act; there must be a first mover, this first unmoved mover is God. God is pure act, no change is possible, so God is immortal. In Buddhism tradition, enlightened sages are often silent. They have achieved a state of mind where stillness is a permanent state. This is a somewhat timeless state.

We might say that these three schools of thought converge in the same definition of time through change and the pursuit of an ideal state of pure knowledge that is motionless and for that same reason timeless.

Well…let us come back to planet earth!

We have three elements at play. The irrefutable fact that we have a limited amout of time on earth, the quality of such time measured by the change we experience (the ambition to do as much as possible) and the goal to achieve a state of enlightenment that is close to stillness and permanence.

Let me start with the amount of change we experience in our lifetime. One interesting aspect of today’s world is the change of “topology”. In old times, the world was wide open and to a certain extent out of reach. We had wonderful stories of remote kingdoms with unthinkable treasures and beauties … that we decided to believe in. Change was slow, and the experience of time was different. Technology in transport made the world smaller even reachable. Regardless of how overwhelmed we were by cultures alien to ours, we began to have a sense that the world was finite. It took few months to come from Europe to the US or to India. In today’s modern world the time-space equation has changed dramatically.

The “annihilation of space by time” is a concept that already appears in Marx in the late XIX^th century, in that case linked to capital accumulation, increased production, exchange, circulation and consumption. Not only transport technology but also exchange and consumption extended our experience of the world. That concept was further developed by Janelle (1969) in the time–space convergence (TSC) concept. TSC refers to the decline in travel time between locations as a result of transportation, communication, and related technological and social innovations.

Today’s topology goes even further. Our world today is defined as a network structure with connectivity among its nodes. That connection and the mere change in nature that occurs when an object is plugged into a network (us humans included) makes our world small, even crowded and perfectly reachable. That fast connectivity creates a sense of proximity that changes the perception of time even more. Change and movement in this new topology is constant.

So we have been given an enormous amount of extra time by our high standard of life and the time we live is far richer and more stimulating than ever!

But how do we experience time? Science concludes that the perception of time is physically located in the insular cortex. This is a place the size of a small almond on the side of our brain which integrates body signals and forms the anatomical and functional basis for the sense of time and awareness in general.  But as anything physical, this little almond can be tricked to stop working…welcome immortality! This can be done by drugs (fast and furious) or by mediation (slow and mellow). When you slow down the parietal lobe, where the time-keeping system resides, the experience of time is modified.

So let us summarize, we are not immortal!

Well, I already knew that without the need to go from Aristotle to Buddhism or St Thomas Aquinas along with Marx and the internet!

You are right, but let me try to bring it together and … tell me what you think.

We have more time today than we have had in any time in human history, the quality of such time is also much better. We have access to a vast amount of information and access to many more experiences both physical (travel) and intellectual (mix of cultures in this global world of people and ideas). All those elements convey a sense of constant change and high speed counteracted by our need to slow down and reflect. Yes, to cultivate our soul. If we are able to learn from all that wide variety of worlds and ideas that we have access to while cultivating our inner self, we can achieve a sense of stability and balance (the motionless being identified with God in the first way). Then, we may get a little closer to immortality. In that state of balance, time is not so important any more.

Reading list

• Marx…. A waste of time after 150 million people were murdered in the name of his “philosophy”
• St Thomas Aquinas, definitely
• D Janelle google him, very interesting
• El Quijote, always a good reading no matter what
• Aristotle YES YES YES
• How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman