Simple rules, randomness, feedback

Lorenz attractor: unpredictable mood swings

...healthy systems are ‘chaotic’, while disease is characterized by a more regular rhythmic behavior...

From Dynamical Behavior of Estrous Cycle in Mice, an unpublished paper I'm proofreading

Toying with the idea of trying to map out the simple rules that would produce a somewhat realistic version of myself in a computer simulation, inspired by hours of GTA IV play, the thought of what makes me tick, and the idea of not having to be here, but something else taking up the slack. Also, Marvin Minsky's Society of the Mind has been facing me on the bookshelf behind this desk for a long time, waiting to be opened, although I think most of the key ideas have filtered through from elsewhere, and I'm always open to having the idea of a centralized, conscious, controlling self cut down to size / blown apart.

A few simple rules, plus randomness - outside events - and feedback. Like a I wrote a few posts back: ...when I feel fat / ugly / poor / stupid I work harder, leading eventually to a period of contentment / over-confidence. Bouncing between moods in a deterministic fashion, albeit one that's too complex to ever get ahead of, essentially unpredictable. Far better just to let go and not worry so much about what happens next inside my head.

I used to have mood swings, elation / despair, but not so much now, rarely ever. In part I ascribe this to being genuinely more content in all aspects of my life, and also to diet / exercise - the chemical basis of things that lay within my control, and finally to a certain cultivated disassociation from my feelings, a lack of identification with whatever just happened, because something else is always happening now, and then that's gone and there's something else.

Alternating periods of gaining energy, information and experience with blank spaces of becoming less complex, less contrived, less reflective, less assured and less self-aware. Being prepared and then being relatively passive.

Of course, you do this and then wake up and the better part of half the time has gone and you've done nothing by anyone's account, and possibly not even your own. The school report will be a bad one: must try harder, could do better. Alternatively, you work terrifically hard on some misguided project - truly misguided, as it doesn't come from some internal drive, and wake up much the same, far progressed along a road you had no intention of setting foot on long ago.

The idea for the rest of the year is to seem to do nothing, while still making $ and expanding in all areas of interest.