Robert Walker

Random Thoughts

October 18, 2022October 21, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Random Thoughts

Just as the health of the body is shaped by what is eaten and when, the health of the mind is influenced by the diet of information. If your mind is subject to poison, you need to build a resistance and reduce the intake.

The main reason for staring at my phone is to read. All human knowledge is there and available, now.

If we were to imagine an advanced alien species visiting Earth, and we projected our values on their likely motivations, they wouldn’t colonise us, they would farm and eat us. Our structures would be like termite mounds, our language like grunts and hisses. They would put us in packed filthy cages, experiment on us, steal our skins, slit our throats and bleed us to death as we struggle for life.

I think, therefore I use algorithms. I am, therefore I can think.

Infinite loops: doubt the doubt; hate the hate; love the love.

Mediums of words: lyrics – singing; poetry – speaking; plays – performing; text – reading.

Performative text has dramatic, lyrical and poetic qualities.

“Novlay” – a novel that is mainly dialogue. Noun.

Invest in trends, preferably before they begin.

Art shows nothing and everything.

A usual human failing is to get carried away by hype. There were a certain set of conditions in place that instantiated quality; once personal perceptions change, those conditions change too.

“Politics” and “career” should be incompatible words. In a highly functioning democracy, politicians are representatives of public will; their role is to lay out a vision, for approval by the people, that is enacted by the nation.

Someone started talking to me in French, apparently whilst he was visiting London. I was able to respond in his language, but it turns out he could speak English and didn’t realise he was in fact speaking his native words. My bad accent gave it away.

In the balance between the individual and the whole, both should be honoured.

Putinland

October 10, 2022December 23, 2023 by Robert Walker, posted in Theme

A despicable act is particularly reprehensible when the perpetrators have had every chance to know better. In the 21st century, behaving like barbarians wanting to resurrect the evils of the past is especially vile.

My opinion has long been that Putin is a psychopathic gangster boss with a corrupt state under his brutal control; yet another despot who murdered anyone perceived as a threat, perverted any justice in government institutions, deceived his people, and stole from his country, like all these types of thugs do. My surprise lately is that he has also shown himself to be colossally stupid. He will lose, the only uncertainty is the amount of destruction he will cause the world in his downfall.

I remember once being in a London restaurant with three Russian women (a long story), when one of them proudly told me that her father was an ex-KGB officer, as if it were a laudable signal of status for her family. What shocked me was that it didn’t seem to cross any of their minds that I equate that bunch of killers with the Gestapo; that I think of it as a violent instrument of the depraved monsters in power that subjugated, tortured and murdered so many people. The reality of the fact seemed to be completely inverted by them away from the appropriate emotions of shame and regret.

Russia, after over thirty years since the collapse of the horrific soviet empire, with all its vast natural resources at its disposal, should not have a tiny, rotten economy, with a GDP per head of an impoverished country. Putinland’s main exports have been weapons and the planet-killing fuels extracted from within its own borders; it creates nothing, except the miseries of war.

Random Thoughts

October 8, 2022October 22, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Random Thoughts

It’s usually a safe bet to assume that the person you are talking to has some degree of mental illness. They need the kindness you would need if you carried their hurt. For the ones who actively hurt others, they need to be stopped.

Countless individuals have carried the flame of life before passing it on to you; a good life helps life flourish in countless more.

Life requires action. Death requires peace. Live and die every day.

Art becomes rancid when it is political. It must speak with universal truth.

For any task, know the best tool and how to use it.

Instead of handing over data to various platforms, people will upload their content in one place. Competing apps will provide interfaces on the content.

Making mortal enemies of tens of millions of people and stealing their land is not only evil but also insanely stupid.

Could you imagine the sacrilege of an invader’s tanks rolling over England’s green hills? The thought creates a feeling of outrage much deeper than anger.

Potent words cast a light on what couldn’t quite be seen.

If a universe can be created, why create just one? If a universe can exist, why only one?

Random Thoughts

October 5, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Random Thoughts

I wrote 13,350 words in 11 days. So it looks like my run rate is about 1,200 words of draft text per day when I have an idea.

My internal soundtrack on headphones represents the mood I need to be in at the time.

If time isn’t a significant constraint then the same outcomes can be achieved by people of very different levels of ability.

My ongoing challenge has been the destupidification of myself.

Absentmindedly putting cumin instead of cinnamon in porridge is not a good idea.

To overturn a despicable regime, a significant amount of people who had previously collaborated with the lie need to overcome their self-deception.

Journal 2022-09-13

September 14, 2022September 16, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Journal

Someone was asking me about the constitutional settlement in the UK, and I had to correct myself fives times by saying “the monarch” instead of “the Queen”. My mind just didn’t want to use the new words.

Kim Jong-un has a 100% approval rating by his adoring serfs. The Kremlin is getting there with all their 180-degree advances.

I think the biggest compliment I’ve had in my office life was, “if we could clone Rob, everything would work.” I remember because I laughed.

When in ultra-efficient robot mode, I prefer asynchronous written communication over imprecise talking. I appreciate short, focused written updates at standard intervals, such as by a certain time of each day. A feature that sends reminders and tracks the updates would be useful.

Your state of mind can affect how you interpret the behaviour of others.

Search for a good lesson in a bad situation. Avoid bad habits in an easy situation.

Listening to podcasts helps me transition to and through unappealing routines.

Stress mode is not enjoyable but is productive for getting practical things done when the energy is focused on positive action rather than negative thoughts. My personal bests for creativity arrive when I am relaxed.

🖤 Dark chocolate with black coffee 🖤

I’ve got a thing for supremely dark chocolate. Sometimes I do speak literally.

Stories determine wellbeing. The ability to put self-told stories down, change them, or rewrite them, determines wellbeing. Every syllable counts.

The best stories speak from fundamental truth; the worst from secondary distorted sensations.

People assign themselves an identity from what society tells them. Imagine if that social situation is warped. Imagine if all that fell away. What is left, in terms of intrinsic worth?

Everything was interesting.

Journal 2022-09-04

September 4, 2022September 15, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Journal

Listening to classical music on headphones is a hack for me when I need to concentrate on one task for a sustained period of time. I think it calms the sea of thoughts that want to compete for attention.

I like designing apps using Figma. Bubble is a very easy way to prototype those designs.

I think I need to listen to the classical music in case other random massive project distractions just pop in.

I can only do comedy as a bizarre character, such as myself.

Just as we cringe at some of the motifs in old film and TV, hopefully future viewers will squirm at some of the current output.

Thinking based on the current point of the zigzagging trend can make you a well-fed sheep, on a mutton farm.

Random Thoughts

August 27, 2022February 21, 2023 by Robert Walker, posted in Random Thoughts

Beliefs control people. It takes kindness and bravery to drop an interpretation that is used for cruelty.

Any person can do a lot of good. Instead, most energy is spent spinning from the algorithm operating on you.

Imagine a world where people live for hundreds of years, still living day-to-day with the mentality learnt from some medieval mud pit.

I do not fit into the 18^th century left-wing/right-wing classification system and neither do most thinking people on most issues. “Conservative” implies past beliefs must be conserved, even though the world is constantly changing. “Progressive” in the political sense is a marketing slogan that suggests anyone not conforming to every current enforced dogma of the group is regressive.

Communism was a bourgeois philosophy designed for cult members to assume power; the people who actually worked were all the same and expendable.

I am neither interested in market ideology nor the discredited social ideologies of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. I am interested in what works. I’m interested in truth and facts, not politicking. I want what is self-actualising to be open to all.

I am not relaxing if it becomes a challenge to see how much I can relax.

I would like functionality where the user can configure and share their own automations for personal finance and investments. Machine learning suggestions in this sphere also has enormous scope.

I have wasted a lot of time in my life, preoccupied with being low quality and crap; although I suppose it’s been interesting to know what that is like. It would be nice now to compare to the opposite.

Random Thoughts

August 26, 2022August 26, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Random Thoughts

If there were a simulation, instead of being just one character, how about being eight billion simultaneously? Your consciousness would constantly alternate between every person in an infinitesimally small period of time, giving you the illusion that you are in the same individual continuously. Each person would have different memories, personality and context, and you would have no knowledge that your consciousness is living everywhere, in everyone.

Authoritarian governments will find it ever easier with technological advancements to zombify and control their populations. When such a government, helped by surveillance technologies and AI, is able to know what you are thinking and feeling, where you are and what you are doing, has control over all the information you receive, and knows your personality impulses precisely – what hope has anyone to escape from the hell constructed for them by the resident psychopaths? China is already a long way down this path, Russia is hurrying to this end too.

There must be a model of openness that prospers in democratic countries. The algorithms that will increasingly guide our lives should be open source and publicly reviewable. There needs to be better realtime checking of fakery, using methodology that is publicly available. There must be a culture and processes in place to ensure transparent, accountable decision-making.

The time window for getting this right is now and we may never get the chance again.

Journal 2022-08-24

August 24, 2022August 24, 2022 by Robert Walker, posted in Journal

To be ultra-confident you can either be a deranged narcissist or you can be yourself completely. The former is fragile, needing lies and selfishness to delay its inevitable demise; the latter invites a playful, open curiosity to life and what is.

There is no desire to convince others that you are happy when you are actually happy. There is no desire to show off to others when you have a sense of fulfilment. There is no hunger for external validation if you appreciate yourself. Showing off a glamorous lifestyle on social media as the suggested purpose of work is no purpose at all.

Initial ideas are easy only if they arrive from the lightbulb moment. The conditions that had to be in place for a person to be able to form original creative ideas were probably far from easy to obtain.