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I don't believe in anything supernatural, but mysticism doesn't count.

Supernatural means beyond nature. No such thing. If it's part of the world, then it is natural.

But parts of the world are still mysterious. Unlikely coincidences shatter our notions of causality. Modern physics struggles to provide a coherent definition of "time", other than "it's what a clock measures." Consciousness is a deep, dark well in which science has only dipped its first toe.

Mysticism accepts and celebrates the mysterious. Sadly, some folks have mystery-blindness.

When little kids grow up with severe colorblindness, they think that "red" and "green" are invented concepts, non-physical – like how "hot" and "cool" get used to describe desirable things.

It can be a great shock to these kids when they find out red and green have physical existence. That other people can perceive something they can't.

Some people think current science describes everything in the world. They usually go even further, that anything not described by current science doesn't exist.

I'm sure these folks have never had a spiritual experience, and for that I feel sorry. But I have to see it as hilarious when they announce that no one has had a spiritual experience, spirituality doesn't exist, that your feelings are incorrect.

Science defines the external world that we all share, and it does that magnificently. But our internal worlds require a different type of investigation.

I used to wish what I love

Wasn't anachronistic

Antagonistic,

Willfully perverse

But…

Nowadays when I hear

What passes for new music

Can't help but think I heard it

Somewhere else first

Generations of noise copy

Round the edges off the wave

When it's cool we kill the chill

And when it's hot we want it cold

Now

Not knockin the new

But what we have got here

Is a failure to communicate due to

Doxxing the old

I wish I hadn't found my strength

In an age of weakness

When the poles of human values

Seem nearly reversed

But

Wish in one hand

Spit in the other

See for yourself which one of 'em

Fills up first

I used to need to want to need you

The neediness divine

But now I need to used to

This is my heart

This is my time

Bass is a mindset.

My buddy and fellow bassist Stoney nominated me to post my top ten bassists.

I love the idea of celebrating bassists. Bassists are the Little Red Hens of music, willing to do the unglamourous but essential work.

I don't love the top ten format. I don't believe you can rank artists. If you love two things, you can't compare them. Choosing one first means you don't really love the other.

Instead, I'm going to use bassists to talk about what music means to me. Bassists are defined by doing what it takes to further the music, not by their instrument.

So the first bassists I want to celebrate happen to play regular 6-string guitars.

Brewer Philips and Hound Dog Taylor, along with Ted Harvey on drums, are Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers. There's never been a more accurately named band. The Houserockers sound like 100% pure party times.

Philips and Taylor trade off playing lead and bass. Not "rhythm guitar", bass. Neither of them ever strum a chord. Their bass lines are "walking", contrapuntal inversions, constantly moving. Supporting each other. What Keith Richards calls, "the ancient art of weaving."Bass makes space.

This punk blues they play, it's ancient and modern at the same time. Go listen to "Gimme Back My Wig". Hound Dog's just singing his truth. The African bards, griots, used to nail a tin can to the back of their instruments' neck to get a buzzy fuzz. The Houserockers play the cheapest amps, but turned all the way up, they produce a fuzzy buzz.

Punk is about doing the best you can with what you have. Bass is essentially punk. Marshall McLuhan said, all technology is an extension of the human body. Jimmy Page's Les Paul and Marshall can simulate the warble of a classically trained singer. Hound Dog's Teisco guitar and Montgomery Ward amplifier simulate the booze-and-butts broken voice of a barfly.

But it's what you do with it. Charles Bukowski wrote amazing poetry in the broken voice of a barfly.

Bass is a mindset. Help make something good happen.

You may not be interested in physics, but some concepts can change how you look at life. One is spacetime.

Spacetime means constant change.

When you hear "spacetime" in science fiction, it's someone yelling about "violating the space-time continuum". It sounds complicated and mysterious, but while the math is complex, the concept doesn't have to be.

Space-time simply means you can't talk about one without talking out the other. In everyday use, we talk about them separately, but it turns out that's not correct.

Look, sometimes common sense is wrong. I wake up in the morning and watch the sun rise out the window. But it doesn't really rise, does it? I should say I wake up and watch the Earth rotate, changing its relative position to the Sun.

Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but it also feels wrong. It feels like I'm sitting still.

But nothing has ever sat still. You also can't talk about separately about space-time and motion. Everything is constantly moving.

Earth rotates, and the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Solar system orbits the Milky Way.

Imagine a clock on the wall. Common sense says it's staying still. But if you put cosmic smoke trails on the hands, they would trace out spirals, like a gymnast with a ribbon, as the clock and the wall and the whole neighborhood scream through space at 78,000 miles per hour.

Common sense says, "I woke up in the same place this morning, in the same house." Not right. It's not in the same place, but it's not quite the same house either. Some organic molecules have decayed, that crack you spotted last week is one micron larger.

Everything is in a constant state of change. Nothing ever stays the same, even for a second.

Accepting change helps a lot, since it's inevitable.

Spacetime changes.

Uncertainty is underrated.

Let me tell you about the worst programmer I ever met. I don't like negativity, but sometimes an example of a bad practice makes the best illustration.

It was my first day on a freelance job, and the team went out to lunch. Sitting around the table, one of the business folks asked the worst programmer how he liked the new open source framework. The lead developer had recently moved their homegrown code to this more formal system.

"Well, it's kind of a security risk," he said. "In our own code, if there's a weakness, no one knows about it. But with this open source stuff the world knows the code we're running."

This statement is so far off base, it's what the physicist Wolfgang Pauli called "not even wrong." Open source software has been proven to be safer, because the whole world is looking at it. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said, "With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow [easy]".

Part of the reason why is because other programmers can catch mistakes staring you in the face. A few days later, I found a rookie security weakness the worst programmer had left, exposing the entire site to total control. So while he had strong opinions about security, he wasn't actually practicing it.

I have more stories about the worst programmer, but they all have the same thing in common: he was totally uninterested in what he didn't know. In fact, he actively struggled against having to learn anything.

The poet Yeats wrote, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." And the worst programmer was certainly passionate, he would argue at the drop of a hat.

This sounds depressing, unless you hear it as advice. To be the best, lack all conviction.

Certainty and confidence are not the same, they're a balance. I start by assuming I know nothing, eliminate as much uncertainty as possible, until I have confidence that I'm making the right decision.

A paradox: if you're convinced there's no way you can possibly be wrong, you probably are. In order to be right, you need to take into account realistic, legitimate doubt.

I'm never certain – modern physics strongly suggests total certainty is impossible. Doubt is uncomfortable, so you have to get used to it. You have to practice it.

Practice uncertainty.

Most things in life repeat, like a theme and variations.

We glorify the variations and scorn the repetition. Our loss. Variations are exciting and memorable, but life exists in repetition.

A single day resembles an entire life. You wake and prepare, before leaving safety and comfort to venture into the world. Get to work, punctuated by rest, detoured by surprises. Tire, and turn to enjoying the result of your labor. Eventually you become too tired for even enjoyment, and consciousness fades.

Music consists of repetition at many different levels. Each time you listen to a piece of music is a repetition. Within a piece of music, melodies and rhythms repeat. The physical act of sound, oscillation, only exists while repeating.

Like the best music deserves repeated listens, so anything worth doing is worth repeating.

Computer programs appear like fluid magic on the surface, wildly variable. But underneath the computer repeats dull arithmetic. Writing computer programs well requires a disciplined set of habits that you perform the same way every time.

To get good at life, get good at repetition.

Practice practice.

What am I doing?

It's the hardest question to answer. And the most important. You only get one life, what do you want to do with it?

I'm writing 30 posts in 30 days. Why?

First and foremost, I want to give back. I have a gift for explaining complex technical concepts in simple terms. This has made me pretty successful in many different areas, and I want to share.

But what areas? "They" say you should specialize in some established subject. I've tried that, and it bores me so much I quit.

I'm a lifelong musician. It means a tremendous amount to me and I'll never stop. But it's not everything. Music gives me insight into other parts of my life.

I'm a software developer. Lots of people don't realize software development is a creative act – it's a form of writing, but using numbers instead of words.

Becoming a better software developer has made me a better musician, and vice versa. In fact all the disciplines I practice, from bicycling to scientific buddhism, have influenced and improved each other.

When you practice, you conduct little science experiments with your own life. What happens if I try it this way instead? No improvement. Try something else. Repeat.

Practice reduces our discomfort with uncertainty. I believe dealing with uncertainty is at the root of the human condition.

And I'm hoping to start a conversation. What are you doing? I look forward to hearing it.

Peace,

Elias

Here's a subtle paradox: I believe in the scientific method, and secular buddhism.

Babies perform the scientific method. When the kid throws toys off the high chair, they're performing experiments. They learn that the mechanics of physics repeat with extreme consistency.

Regardless of what else you believe about reality, sanity demands we agree on the consistency of it. Sometimes people claim miracles happen, but in public, unconstrained places, no one has shown themselves able to fly. Reality acts the same. To run, an engine needs fuel, spark, air, and timing. Once a dish is broken, it never spontaneously un-breaks itself.

The scientific method explains the external world really well, by eliminating possibilities. If you can come up with a test that disproves a hypothesis, and it consistently produces the same result, you can prove something about reality.

The internal world is more complicated. But you can still apply the scientific method there. To me, that's what Siddartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, invented: internal science.

Much like Jesus was Jewish, Gautama was Hindu, and the religion of Buddhism incorporates all the metaphysical Hindu magic: demons and angels from other realms using undetectable forces to manipulate human souls.

But also like Jesus' pure message of love, Gautama had a message which stays valid when separated from the magic. This is secular buddhism: the practical teachings of how to live your life, with all the magic removed.

Here's the TLDR of secular buddhism: be radically, totally honest with yourself.

Words are very powerful, but also misleading. Words (in the form of knowledge) can help us direct and manipulate reality for our benefit. But sometimes we fall under the illusion that the words are reality. And then we wind up defending the definition of the word, sometimes at a terrible cost.

Reality – both external and internal – is what it is. It doesn't care what you label it. And when you struggle to preserve a label which doesn't fit reality, you can waste breathtaking amounts of energy.

Secular buddhism and the scientific method are both forms of acceptance. The paradox comes from saying I believe in them. You don't really have to believe at all, because you know.

There is a simple, physical, concrete explanation for quantum mechanics. It fully explains the results without any mystical voodoo about multiverses or consciousness.

It's a simple explanation, but simple ain't easy. Physicists know about this explanation; they don't care for it because they find it philosophically distasteful.

Hard things are often good for you though. As difficult as this explanation is to accept, it also tells us something important about how we our lives.

First, we need to talk about explanations of quantum mechanics. The math and science of QM are the make the most accurate and precise predictions ever, confirmed by the most accurate and precise predictions ever.

The math and science are beyond doubt. But QM experiments probe reality at such a basic level, the more pressing question is what does the math mean.

The path of a baseball thrown from a pitcher to a catcher can be described by an equation representing a curve. Anyone who throws a ball has to aim higher than their target, because gravity pulls the ball down while it's on its way to the plate. In this case, there's no question what the math means; it's literal.

This is the same calculus Issac Newton came up with, and it still works great, on one or two objects. More than two and calculations quickly grind to a halt.

Statistical mechanics is a different way to calculate. Imagine you had a map of every pitch ever thrown in a baseball game.

You'd know the chances of the ball ending up in any given place. Large chance in the strike zone, surrounded by larger areas of medium chance. Low chance in the areas outside the batter's box – once in a while, a wild pitch goes way off course, but that doesn't happen often. Likewise there'd be a very small chance of the ball ending up at first base.

None of this tells you anything about where the next pitch is going to end up. If they swap out the pitcher, you know the percentages change and the areas shift. But from the averages you can't say where the next pitch will go.

The math expresses this as uncertainty. All the explanations of QM try to map that uncertainty back to part of the real world.

The two mainstream explanations, Copenhagen and Many-worlds, try to map the uncertainty to unreality. That's where all the voodoo comes from: the cat which is both alive and dead – which, by the way, Schrodinger came up with to illustrate how he didn't believe Copenhagen.

Superdeterminism takes the uncertainty literally – it says the uncertainty in the math represents what we do not (and can never) know. The physical reality exists, the cat is either alive or dead, we just don't know until we look in the box.

But this has a difficult consequence. We don't know where the ball will end up after the next pitch, but it will end up somewhere. If the uncertainty only represents our lack of knowledge, then the pitch has already been thrown and caught. We just don't know the result yet.

Superdeteriminism says the future is as real as the present, and as unchangeable as the past. Meaning that what we think of as "free will" is really a form of uncertainty – what we choose tomorrow has already been decided, in the same way that where we find ourselves today depends on the choices we made yesterday. The choices have already been made, but we don't know about the results yet.

It's a simple explanation, but not an easy one.

Words are the problem.

The Hell's Angels put it this way: "Those who talk don't know, and those who know don't talk." Tibetan Buddhism teaches wisdom speaks little. Linguists and mathematicians describe the same quality with the symbol-grounding problem and Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Some things can't be described in words. Doesn't matter how many books you read about how to ride a bike before you swing your leg over one.

And yet, certain similarities become useful because they're universal.

Most of life is about repetition. Mindless repetition can be awful grim, but mindful repetition ascends to a higher level: practice. Life goes better when you're better at life, and you get better through practice.

Words can distort practice. When I have an idea in my head about "how" things should be, I almost always get it wrong.

People like to make fun of the saying, "it is what it is." But all things are what they are, not what we call them. The closer we see things for what they are, the more effective we are.

Words are the problem.