Negotiating grad schools with my subconscious

I'm deciding where to go to grad school, right, and where to spend the next 5-6 years of my life. It's a tough choice with a lot of factors. Our slow sequential rational minds are not great at processing these huge multi-dimensional choices, but luckily we've got these built-in hacks called "emotions". They're capable of doing massive processing, but they're tricky! For example, the weather has a big impact on which school you attend. Also, I like feeling accepted by people I respect. So I've got to understand what my emotions are telling me and then decide which ones to listen to.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Georgia Tech
Pros:

• The wearable computing contextual computing lab (and neighboring BCI lab). When I heard about magic piano gloves, I was ready to sign on the dotted line right there.
• The other students visiting along with me had mostly done something else before coming back to grad school. Of course I'm biased, but I think that's a good sign.
• Atlanta's cooler than I expected.

Cons:

• The "Aikido problem": if I decide to try some new thing (say, Aikido), will there be a studio nearby? If it's driving distance, I won't stick with it. I want an atmosphere where growth is not only possible but actively enabled; does Atlanta have that?

UW

Pros:

• I feel like family already.
• They are so tight with Microsoft Research, Intel, Google, and y'know other companies too.
• I met a lot of fervent supporters. People who, if you asked them to rate their time at UW on a 1-5, would say 5.
• And I had a couple of think-really-big conversations. Students and profs interested in big important work, not just publishing papers. I think their heads are on straight.

Cons:

• I'm not really looking forward to going back to Seattle, oddly, and I'm not sure why. The rain or something? The homogeneous Stuff-White-People-Like-ness?

U of Toronto

Pros:

• The prof I'd work with seems very sharp, enthusiastic, flexible, and interested in growing his lab.
• Toronto is an amazing city. I like it so much. And U of T is right downtown.

Cons:

• HCI is not such a focus there as it is at CMU, GA Tech, and UW. (doesn't mean there's not cool stuff going on. but CMU/GA Tech have whole schools for HCI, and UW has a big group.)
• I met a couple of folks who might rate their time there as a 2.

CMU

Pros:

• There's a whole school dedicated to HCI; the class mix is different than I'd get elsewhere (for better or worse).
• I have a few friends in Pittsburgh. Plus, Pittsburgh is cool and cheap.

Cons:

• I'd feel a little weird being back at CMU, too, and I'm not sure why.

To be continued!

More interesting things on the internet

Some studies, mostly from Richard Wiseman via Eric Barker, about people that I find maybe useful:
Smelling rosemary makes you smarter?
Owning a dog (not a cat) is apparently really really good for your stress levels. Bummer, because I don't want to own a dog. Maybe watching them on Youtube is just as good.
Selective attention seems like a good thing. Maybe I should buy a lab coat.
Swearing (at the beginning or end of a speech) is fucking magical.
Sleep more! It helps willpower. I've been recommended this book too, and I'm looking forward to it.
Put a mirror in your kitchen, put a plant in your office, and touch people on the arm.
We can do conversation better. Here are 27 specific ways.
Your name matters a lot. Helps to have a positive name, especially one that starts with A or B, and good initials. If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm going to wander into absurd territory now and wonder if my initials, DJT, have made me more likely to be a college DJ. My sister and mom are both CAT; seems appropriate!

Got too far into absurd territory? Remember, it's easy to manipulate stats! More importantly, it's hard not to manipulate stats. You want some effect to happen, so you'll subconsciously do all sorts of tricks to get a statistically significant result. Even worse, stats will be buried deep in any paper you read (or might not appear at all). The burden is on us, researchers, to not do this!

Back to the real world- nah, hold up, let's stay in somewhat speculative territory for a while. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) sounds like a silver bullet for quick easy flow. However, with any brain silver bullets, lots of caveats: might not be the same thing, might have side effects, might only work on some tasks, might completely fry your brain. It feels to me like trying to repair your car's engine wearing boxing gloves. But the greedy futurist in me is excited.

Okay, real world. What should you do? Something difficult. Something that you'd like on your tombstone. Something productive.

A new site urging publishers to open up their damn academic journals: Who Needs Access? You Need Access.

Introverts and extroverts: I like this, because I feel similar. But what makes someone an introvert, and not just shy or unconfident? I don't know, and until I get a straight answer to that, I'm going to be a little tentative when I talk about introverts. It feels a little like nerd-pride: "I like Star Wars and that makes me different and that's okay!" is better than "I like Star Wars and that makes me different and I'm ashamed!" but it's less good than not feeling the need to assert that you like Star Wars in the first place.

Learning that pain is not suffering by investigating the pain. This feels like connoisseurship. I think if I started talking about being a pain connoisseur, people would look at me funny, but that feels like a good way to learn how to deal with pain (both physical and psychological).

How do you get over phobias?

I'm viscerally afraid of bugs and needles. Seeing a bug (a big one, a stingy one, or a cockroach inside) makes my blood run cold. Seeing a needle or needly blood (drops of blood, surgical cuts, large quantities, etc) makes me lightheaded and faint. This is a little bit limiting in everyday life: bugs go from nuisances to really bad events, and getting a shot becomes an ordeal. I'd like to be free of both phobias, particularly the needle one.

How can I do this? Should I jump in and just get a big dose of it, or should I wade into the water slowly? Is it impossible, and should I just avoid needles as much as possible? Or is there a fourth option? (hypnosis? meditation? ... iron deficiency?)

Due to my experience with needles, I think jumping in might not work. I tried to give blood twice and fainted or almost fainted each time. Last time I had blood drawn for a doctor's appointment, it had the same effect.

Due to my experience with bugs, I think wading in slowly might work. India helped, especially the retreat where our bathroom usually had one large spider in it. The spiders didn't move much and they never came into our bedroom, so I could see a spider every day and get to be more or less okay with it. Roaches still freak me out, but I now know that I can see one without a house being infested, so it's not the end of the world. So I'm thinking, little bits of exposure to bugs will help me overcome my fear of bugs. And my bug phobia is not so bad anyway.

So I'm thinking about wading in. Maybe by watching Dexter. But it's tough; a full episode makes me lightheaded. Do you, dear reader, have any tips?

Watchin' movies on planes that could have been better except for dumb folk wisdom

or, "Dan gets mad at pop culture twice."

Limitless. Well, this one was actually not bad. It's fun. Guy finds drug that makes him mental Superman.
First: "You know how we only use 10% of our brain? This drug lets us use 100%." Can we stop this? It's just silly.
Second: the guy was a burnt out loser, but after he takes the drug, he tells his girlfriend "It's okay now. I'm back." She says "Who's back?" "I am." "That's not you. That's the drug." Can we stop this too? It's voodoo, tribal folk myths, the idea that you have some magic "life force" or identity, and when you take a drug, that magic life force leaves you and the drug possesses you. Reminds me of D.A.R.E.

In Time. This movie was actually awful. But such a good premise: in the future, time is the currency. When you turn 25, you stop aging, and instead you get a clock with one year on it; when it expires, you die. You can buy/sell/trade time. So the rich people live for thousands of years, and the poor people just try to scrape together enough time-currency to survive another day.
The problem: "We're not meant to live forever." This is kind of the bias behind the whole film, and it's never defended or discussed, it's just accepted as a given.

On the other hand, one movie that gets it right: Moneyball. Statistics work. Just like in the real world. But they don't magically predict the future 100% of the time, just on average. Again, just like the real world.

A movie I didn't get: Scarface. But then, I didn't get The Godfather either.
A movie that was pretty good, and god bless them for trying something different and pulling it off: The Artist.
A movie that's hella cute: My Neighbor Totoro. Also, I have a new answer for "if you had to get a pet, what would you get?"

Link blasts

I don't know if anyone likes these posts, but at the very least, it's a good list of things I found interesting once and might want to find again.

A lot of people are up in arms about academic publishing recently, and for good reason. It's a huge scam. Publishers like Elsevier (the current scapegoat, the McDonalds of the academic publishing industry) create journals. Scientists send papers in to these journals (often at a cost to the scientist). The journal sends each article out to other scientists to peer-review. Then the reviewers decide which ones go in the journal, and then the journal charges people $20/article to read them, or sells subscriptions to university libraries for thousands of dollars. Notice that, in this whole description, the journal is doing nothing useful that the internet cannot do, but it's raking in obscene amounts of money from underfunded universities and poor students. Here's a bit more about it. Note to self: look into the state of this in 6 months or so, when I start actually researching.

Diversity is not about color anymore. Urban/rural is a bigger divide than white/brown/black. I have more in common with a Bangalore software engineer than a Western Washington farmer. Haves/Have-nots is an even bigger divide.

"Unplug your machines on Sunday" is a useful solution to the "information overload" problem, but it's not the whole answer. To me it feels like meditating for half an hour a day: a great start, but if you're not living mindfully the other 23.5 hours, it's only a start. Also, this article does a good job of laying out at least 5 of the main issues that we tend to unfairly lump together into "technology overload." Multitasking, Fear of Missing Out, Disconnection from the real world, Information Overload, and "The Shallows".

Connecting with people, one silly and pre-rehearsed sentence at a time. "That's a nice dog." Brings a surprisingly nice jolt! He attributes it to oxytocin; whether it is or not, it's a pretty nice feeling, and good on him for this effort.

Erasing memories. Don't say "Eternal Sunshine." I think that if this ever works on people, the effects will be so complicated. We imagine "okay, I'll just forget when that bully hit me last week", but that's like saying "I'll just have Google forget that 'person' and 'human' are synonyms."

Who is Sam Harris, and how have I just heard of him twice with a week?
First: Fireplaces are actually really bad for you. And we're not good at taking our folk beliefs and figuring out which are accurate and which are not.
Second: This makes Brazilian Jiu-jitsu sound really appealing to learn. Also, it is neat that the question "what is the best method of fighting?" has an answer: a mix of western boxing, Thai boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, depending on how far you are from your opponent.

Think I saw this a while ago but forgot about it: Toxoplasma gondii messes with us in lots of subtle ways. Same way that certain parasites make bugs climb grass so that birds can eat them more easily. Cool!

One man's experiences with various nootropics. (These are safe, legal drugs.)

UMD seminar about the future of Human-Computer Interaction. "The future of HCI" is a wide topic; looks like they break it down into crowdsourcing, input, personal informatics, and "cyborg". Interested to see what they pick to read, especially as those seem to me to be four of the most interesting parts of HCI.

"You don't want that thing; you want the experience of getting what you want"

This thought has been running through my head a lot recently. (Anyone know the actual quote?)

Think about the first time you had vodka. It probably tasted like hell because it was cheap, but then it made you feel nice afterwards. Pretty soon, that became a default: every weekend you could have some cheap vodka at a college party, so it lost some mystique. The experience of wanting something and getting it became lessened. Perhaps you then desired tastier vodka, so when you upgraded to Smirnoff it felt like a luxury again. Maybe you then got a job and started making money, so you could buy Smirnoff whenever you wanted. But then you didn't get the experience of wanting something and getting it; you just got the experience of getting something. Lost its appeal again. Maybe you moved up to fancier vodka. Maybe you buy Grey Goose, even though I bet you money you don't actually like the taste better!

Creating desires so you can fulfill them. Weird, right? Well, and not very productive either. I'm wondering what happens when you hit consumptive singularity, or whatever: when your whole life is just an exceedingly elaborate series of fulfilling desires. (and I'm not just talking stupid hedonism: these desires could include a loving family, career success, whatever.) Probably feels great. Hmm.

I think if I continued this post, I'd just hit Buddhism 101. Whoops. The original and useful point I'm trying to make is this: occasionally examine your life, and notice where you're just desiring the experience of wanting something and getting it.

Albums where the last song is the best

1. Sgt. Pepper's (A Day in the Life)
2. The Bends (Street Spirit (fade out))
3. Speaking in Tongues (This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody))
4. John Henry by They Might Be Giants (The End of the Tour)
5. Z by My Morning Jacket (Dondante)
6. Bitter Tea by the Fiery Furnaces (Benton Harbor Blues, well, kind of)
EDIT: 7. Daisies of the Galaxy by Eels (Mr. E's Beautiful Blues)

What else?

ps. like how I didn't list who made Speaking in Tongues, because of course you already know it, just as well as you know Sgt. Pepper's and The Bends?

Scarcity makes people worse

I am thinking that almost all instances of people being awesome occur in situations of plenty, and almost all instances of people being crummy occur in situations of scarcity. Scarcity activates the circuit that says "I gotta get mine before it's all gone". Money, food, status, time; next time someone's getting testy or worse, look for what is scarce. See if you can alleviate it. Also, learn from that instance and see how you can avoid this being scarce in the future.

I am really inspired. This has happened before.

This is part of a work in progress; I have a lot of ideas floating around and I'd like to track their progression over time.

Tourism is boring me. You can read more about that on my travel blog if you like. The thing is, I'm just not inclined to go see more buildings or natural sites or, hell, wonders of the world. Nor even to find the best coffee or beer.

I feel like I've just been consuming. Consuming food and drinks, consuming experiences. Traveling around the world to find the best experiences to consume.

Now, let me be clear that I don't see any moral wrong in this; I just see it as unfulfilling. I don't think that being The Best at consuming (either as a gourmet or as No Impact Man) will lead me to a life that I am satisfied with. Consuming seems to be just one part of life.

I've felt like this before at least once: after coming back from Maastricht. My five months there were some of the most carefree and debaucherous (though, really, still not very debaucherous) of my life. I got so fed up with consuming and excited about coming back and getting things done. What happened? I immediately made a few really productive changes to my life. Before I left, in December 2006, I was living in a basement, grumbling about academic and extracurricular commitments, bored with work and eating too much GoLean Crunch and soy milk. After I returned and made these changes, in August 2007, I was enjoying classes, drawing cartoons, living in an awesome orange room in a house owned by one of my best friends, beginning a great new relationship, researching fervently in a new lab, committing myself selectively to extracurriculars, and listening to The Knife. It was one of the best half-years of my life.

Let's (royal we) do this again. Let's begin a new career in a new town. But let's do it even better this time. Now that I know a bit more about how life works, perhaps I can recreate my life with a bit more wisdom. What are the parts to a fulfilling life, and how can I make those easy to achieve? I'll start with a "wish list" of floaty ideas, and see if I can then boil them down into concrete things to do.

- career, sure. Think I've spent enough time on this one. Grad school will be a challenge, and hopefully also a joy, but either way it'll be unpredictable enough that I don't know how to optimize it yet.
- eating right: some ideas include only buying food that cannot be immediately eaten, committing to three square meals and no snacks, or cultivating the joy of hunger that I've been working on. A less likely but still neat idea is refined-sugar teetotaling.
- exercising right: first, I will ride bikes everywhere, as usual. Second, though, I think just biking is not enough. I think I would like to do something else, something to work on all the parts of the body besides cardiovascular health and leg strength. I would like to fight people, like wrestling, because fighting requires strength and balance, and is fun. Perhaps the closest real-world analogue to this is a martial art? If so, which one? Finally, some yoga might help too.
- mental and spiritual health. Keep on meditating. Go on retreat sometimes. Do not lose the urge to get enlightened, and mindfully monitor the rest of my life, changing stuff if necessary.
- healthy social group. I've always been working on this. One thing that will help is the new less-judgmental attitude I'm developing. Maybe I should entertain more? I like throwing parties and hosting small gatherings; maybe I should invite more people more often with a cause. Some ideas include an album listening deal (like a film club but you listen to an album instead) and this creative circle thing I've tossed about but never done.
- dating. I should dedicate some energy to this.
- creating. As posted a couple posts ago, I think this is healthy, and I don't do it much. Also this. My current whim is that I want to start making some designs. Probably digital. Maybe try something like a Wacom tablet to do some drawing? Also, code more. This is very floaty, but I do want to find some time for, y'know, "hey, what if I could write a script to run my refrigerator for me?"
- serendipity. Make 20% of my life surprises that I don't like, so I keep growing. This feels like a cross-cutting concern, a way to do things instead of something else to do, and I don't know how to do it.
- listening to new music. I still like doing this, and it doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.