Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Jan 01, 2021

I suspect my mind of taking its observations of a person’s physical energy and dexterity as strong evidence about their mental quickness and clarity.

The existence and the wrongness of this presumption were brought into relief for me by reading Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, on his life with locked-in syndrome. Because realizing that the author’s lively and intelligent voice was issued from a single blinking eye looking out of a mostly inert body felt like seeing a magic trick.

Mistakes to want Jan 01, 2021

The end of the year is a classic time for reflecting on the year. And a classic part of reflecting is noticing mistakes you have made. I admit that I don’t relish this: having made mistakes, admitting to them, and looking at them further all pain me, and I find it hard to call things mistakes. It’s because to make a mistake would seem to be to make the world worse than it could have been, and thus to indelibly reduce the total goodness of the universe at the end of time, which feels like a big deal and the worst (only?) evil.

Seeing the edge of the world Dec 31, 2020

A nice thing about looking at the ocean that I noticed today is that it is unusually easy to interpret the view as a close up of the edge of a giant wet ball of rock in space, and thus to more compellingly visualize the fact that I live on one of those, and some of all that that entails.

The Pacific Ocean where I am got dark, so here’s the Norwegian Sea 2.5 years ago to illustrate:

Desires as film posters Dec 29, 2020

Sometimes I like to think of desires as like film posters. You come across them, and they urge you to do something, and present it in a certain way, and induce some inclination to do it. But film posters are totally different from films. If you like a film poster, you don’t have to try to see the film. There is no metaphysical connection between the beauty of a film poster and the correctness of you seeing the film. It’s some evidence, but you have other evidence, and you get to choose. A film poster can be genuinely the most beautiful film poster you’ve ever seen, without the film being a worthwhile use of two hours. That’s largely an orthogonal question. If you put up the poster on your wall and look at it lovingly every day, and never see the film, that doesn’t need to be disappointing—it might be the best choice, and you might be satisfied in choosing it.

Measuring up to incredible potential Dec 28, 2020

Yesterday I wrote that people often talk as if events are basically determined by people’s values and capabilities, ignoring the difficulty of figuring out which opportunities to take, or even noticing opportunities.

I think one reason to have a better model is that this one doesn’t account for a substantial category of felt difficulty in being a human, possibly encouraging a general sense that one is ubiquitously failing, what with not seeming to be demonstrably grabbing the best of a vast multitude of possible options at each moment.

Infinite possibilities Dec 28, 2020

Naively, for instance from the perspective of me as a child, it seems like a person has vastly many possible options at each moment, leading out in every direction, where many of them surely lead to amazing things, and thus it should be very easy to have an incredibly great life and make a huge positive difference to the world.

An open Christmas card to my stepfather Dec 27, 2020

Happy Christmas!

I made you a link post of things you might find interesting on the internet. (Please don’t feel obliged to look at them!)

Lots of love, Katja oxo

(Picture: Christmas Eve, by Carl Larson, 1904-5)

An open Christmas card to my brothers Dec 26, 2020

Dear Brothers,

Happy Christmas! I made you a list of things you might like on the internet. I won’t tell you which of you any was intended for, so feel especially free to skip any that don’t look interesting.

Love, Katja

(Picture: nearing Christmas in New York 2017)

Open Christmas card to my father Dec 24, 2020

Dear Daddy,

Merry Christmas! I got you a list of things on the internet I thought you might find interesting. No obligation to look at them. (Many things I’ve enjoyed lately are old or about history, so there’s a good chance that you have seen them or seen much better things, but oh well.)

Lots of love from Katja oxo

(Picture: our Christmas tree)

Open Christmas card to my mother Dec 23, 2020

Dear Mama,

Happy Christmas!

Rather than be so bold as to give you a further object to take care of, I gathered for you a collection of things I think you might like on the internet. I CC the world, in case they are interested, or want to add anything.

Lots of love, Katja xox

(Picture: Geboorte van Christus, Robert van den Hoecke, after Jan van den Hoecke, 1632 - 1668)