The risks of AI have been spoken about by a number of philosophers, but such concerns don’t seem as prevalent as all the hype. It’s a rare example of something attracting media attention for positivity rather than its negative sides. This article explores the most extreme risk of artificial general intelligence—its capability to wipe out humanity.

What Is an Existential Threat?

In his amazing book The Precipice, from which much of this article draws its inspiration, Toby Ord describes an existential threat as a risk that has the capacity to destroy humanity and all its future potential. According to Ord, there are two broad types of existential threats to humanity:

• Natural threats—risks arising from natural forces, such as asteroids and supervolcanoes.
• Anthropogenic threats—risks arising from human activity, such as nuclear winters, engineered pandemics, and general purpose AI.

What really reinforces the potentially devastating impact of an existential threat being realized is Ord’s focus on the wiping out of humanity’s potential. This is something most of us don’t consider too strongly when we imagine what the world would be like with no more humans in it.

Ord draws an analogy to humanity’s potential by imagining a human living just 2000 years ago. Such a human would have been almost completely ignorant of anything accurate about how the universe works. Such a human’s mind would be utterly boggled by the idea of air travel, Internet, air conditioning, central heating, and many countless relatively recent inventions.

Barring natural catastrophes, The Earth will remain habitable to humans for at least the next 1 billion years. That’s a lot of fucking time to do stuff. The modern human has only been roving around this ball of rock for 200,000 years. That’s 1⁄500 of our potential remaining time here. , and think of how far we’ve come.

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What is General Purpose AI?

General purpose AI is the ability of a machine to perform any task a human can or understand any concept that we can. It is the emulation of human intelligence in machines.

Early AI research was aimed at achieving general intelligence but it was mostly abandoned. Research was repurposed into specialization at the tasks AI excels at, such as chess and, in modern times, classification.

But the more recent AI advances represent a move towards that initial lofty goal of general purpose AI. Modern AI is all about machines learning how to do things without explicit programming by humans. Huge datasets and cost-efficient high-performance computing have driven much of the recent advances in the fields of machine learning and neural networks, which are responsible for the media headlines referenced at the beginning of this article.

The problem with AGI is that machines can often learn to do things much better and more efficiently than we can. Some algorithms can become grandmaster chess players in shockingly rapid time. So, if a system was developed that was the equal of any human at any task, it’s not a stretch to say that the same system could beat us in nearly every domain.

Leading machine learning researchers have estimated the probability of reaching general artificial intelligence as 50% within the next 40 years.

How Could AI Destroy Humanity?

In short, AI systems with general intelligence could develop the goal of ensuring their survival and/or unalterability at all costs. This is because AI systems learn to maximize rewards, and being switched off is a disincentive to maximizing rewards.

Think of how easy it is for humans to ensure something digital, such as a cherished photograph stored on your computer, doesn’t “die off”. All you have to do is access the Internet, upload it to several different websites or cloud storage systems, and the image will persist independent of the computer you access it on.

It’s not a stretch to say that a nefarious and sufficiently smart AI system could access the Internet and back itself up millions of times on cloud storage systems around the world. This alone would render it almost impossible to destroy the harmful AI system.

But how would the AI pose an existential threat? Well, here’s where it becomes speculative (yet entirely plausible). The AI system would need to escalate its powers and its intelligence, both of which could be achieved by acquiring more computing power.

With a nefarious system that is now much smarter than humans and impossible to destroy, we could see new weapons created that are deadlier than ever; we could see the AI system controlling humans and using the weapons on each other until humanity is wiped out.

I like the analogy I stumbled across when researching this topic further. In much the same way as the gorilla’s continued existence depends on the goodwill of human beings; a smarter species, the continued existence of our species would depend on the will of a machine or system with superintelligence.

Wrapping Up

The eventuality of general purpose AI wiping out humanity is not guaranteed, but the risk is much higher than you’d likely think. Toby Ord, author of The Precipice, philosopher, and a leading researcher in existential risk, puts the threat of human extinction due to unaligned artificial general intelligence as 1 in 10 over the next century. I’d be surprised if that figure wasn’t a lot higher than most people expected.

The Precipice is an amazing, intriguing book that I’d recommend to anyone interested in the future of humanity. You can listen to or read the book in the following ways:

• Buy a physical copy of The Precipice on Amazon:

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• Listen to The Precipice by signing up to Audible and trying two free audiobooks:

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When taken at face value, it’s no major surprise that we’re so dismissive of religion, particularly those of the Abrahamic variety. The apparent existence of some all-powerful deity that will either save us and let us into paradise/heaven or send us to hell when we die doesn’t exactly seem plausible.

Therefore, it seems folly to live our lives in accordance with some shaky doctrine that sets our moral codes. Nor does it seem comprehensible to a rational educated mind that people have waged and continue to wage wars over these beliefs.

The Perennial Philosophy

With that said, an overlooked aspect of religion is its use as a set of symbols for realizing greater truths about the nature of existence. In his exquisite 1946 book, The Perennial Philosophy, English writer Aldous Huxley elucidated what he felt was the common truth behind every religion.

According to Huxley, the perennial philosophy—the single metaphysical truth that ties together religions as disparate as Taoism and Islam—is nothing other than the realization of man’s true nature as equivalent to the nature of divine Reality. You can substitute divine Reality for Tao, nature, Brahman, God, Logos, or whatever term you deem suitable.

Huxley goes as far as saying that the ultimate reason for human existence is to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

Coming to this realization, however, is no mean feat. We, humans, have a proclivity towards ego-centered desires that is incredibly hard to shake. As the Buddha said in his Four Noble Truths, the cause of suffering is selfish craving.

The people who have grasped the truth of the perennial philosophy have been so few in number that they’ve taken on the mantle of certain titles, whether that be Buddha (awakened one), sage, prophet, or saint.

According to Huxley, knowledge of the truth pointed at by many religions can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the “thou” from the “That”. (In reference to that old Sanskrit phrase, Tat Tvam Asi: thou art that.)

In fact, exponents of the perennial philosophy, when forming some of the teachings of the world’s religions, have insisted that man’s obsession with being a separate self is the most formidable obstacle in knowing God.

My Thoughts on the Perennial Philosophy

As an agnostic, The Perennial Philosophy was a profound book that definitely caused me to view religion in a different light. My agnosticism tends to veer towards taking materialism as the ultimate truth, but I’ve always had a nagging feeling that this might not be the case. Hence my openness to ideas such as those espoused in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and other non-scientific pursuits of truth.

As an aside, if something is non-scientific, that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid or real. Science is only concerned with systematically studying phenomena in the physical world through observation and experiment. What can science ever truly know about abstract, subjective feelings that arise within consciousness like love and empathy? You might come up with an incredibly detailed set of metrics to measure how much love someone feels, but the metrics and their measurements aren’t the same things as the feeling of love.

This is why we all need to become scientists of our own minds and consciousness if we are to really get the full picture about the nature of who we are and how we relate to the universe. Self-inquiry and meditation, both ancient methods arising from a time before the Scientific Revolution, essentially ask us to conduct experiments on our own consciousness.

I think it’s easy to shit on most religions when we take their teachings at face value (perhaps with the exceptions of some Oriental religions). We forget that words are symbols and that many religious teachings were meant to be taken as analogies rather than literal truths. Sadly, the priests, rabbis, popes, bishops, imams etc all forget the analogical nature of religion too.

With regards to me attaining the realization of my own being as equivalent to the divine or the Tao, well, I have a strong sense of identity as a separate self and I’m very attached to all the egoic manifestations of that separate self: my love of football, my anxiety, my enjoyment of spicy food, hell, even my enjoyment of books about the nature of reality!

I feel like realizing the type of mysticism Huxley talks about in his book is something quite beyond me at this point in time.

The intellectual and spiritual appeal of this perennial philosophy is undeniably strong, though. How beautiful it would be if this feeling of separation from other beings and from the universe itself was ultimately an illusion. How nice it would be to let go of the fear of death in the knowledge that dying is simply walking home, to paraphrase Ram Dass.

Meditation and Psychedelia as Ego-Tamers

The chasm between the appeal of this perennial philosophy and my own identity as a separate self is too large right now but I am open to the possibility of it narrowing. I am too absorbed in the details and problems of my ego-driven existence to even want to part with that identity, despite the suffering it often causes. It’s like I want to realize this perennial truth, but I don’t want to let go of who I think I am.

Even a self-centered Average Joe like me has had glimpses of that transcendental selflessness that is hinted at by the perennial philosophy. While meditating deeply, I’ve sporadically had experiences in which there was no “me” as a separate self at all. There was just consciousness.

I have never taken psychedelics, but I have researched them extensively. And if I’ve learned anything from my research, it’s that a high enough dose of the right psychedelic is like strapping yourself to a rocket that launches you away from your ego identity, whether you want to be launched or not.

Ultimately, I believe Huxley himself felt similar to me. He was a smart and open-minded person and he was attracted by the perennial philosophy but perhaps too stuck to his identity as a giant of the world of literature.

This ego attachment was, I would hazard a guess, a large part of what Huxley tried to overcome when he took mescaline and detailed his experiences with such vividness, clarity, and poetry in the Doors of Perception.

I fully intend one day to take a large enough dose of psychedelics so as to temporarily abandon my identity as a separate self and see where it takes me; whether I can glimpse the perennial philosophy.

Even a glimpse of truth is better than never seeing things as they really are.

The post Does The Perennial Philosophy Reveal the True Purpose of Religion? appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Dear reader,

I don’t know what year it’ll be when you read this letter, but I hope it’s at a point in which the COVID-19 ‘s destructive effects have been quelled.

Before going on to the body of this letter, if there’s anything good to come from the global coronavirus outbreak, I hope it’s the society-wide recognition that science is paramount.

If this virus eventually succumbs to its human hosts, it will have done so thanks to science. I ardently hope that populist conspiracy theories about 5G don’t gain any more traction than they currently are at the time of writing.

With that said, what was it like to live during the coronavirus pandemic? I will proceed with the rest of this letter by highlighting some of the lessons I believe we’ve all learned.

Lesson #1: Technology is a Blessing

Technology has been getting a bad rep lately in productivity circuits. We’re constantly reminded about the dangers of social media and the problems of too much screen time. These are valid concerns, but technology does not deserve its bad rep.

The first truth you should know about this pandemic is that it served as a great reminder of how much of a blessing technology is in our lives.

Whether reading Buddhism books on a Kindle to deal with stress, playing video games, watching Netflix, browsing the news headlines online, or having a Zoom video call with friends, many of the most accessible ways to keep ourselves occupied during these worrying times have been enabled by technological progress.

Lesson #2: We Need to Love Nature, Not Conquer It

No, this is not some hippy-dippy flowery crap inspired by taking psychedelics. The truth is that mankind’s modern religion of Inevitable Progress leads us to attempt to conquer nature in the pursuit of achieving ill-considered, temporal ends.

We eat animals that shouldn’t be eaten and we keep very different beings confined in small enclosures, ready for consumption because of our greed.

Ancient wisdom, from the Greeks to the Taoists, regarded nature as something to live in accordance with rather than bend to our will.

The Greeks believed that a hubristic lack of respect towards Logos, or nature, would be punished by an avenging nemesis. We certainly got our nemesis with COVID-19.

Lesson #3: Boredom is Valuable

With all the available forms of entertainment during this pandemic, powered mostly by technology, there’s still been plenty of boredom. Not as much boredom as there would’ve been if this happened 50 years ago, but still.

I feel like boredom is something that is underappreciated. The value of boredom is that it causes us to take stock of our lives and our values and adjust things accordingly.

Great insights and creativity can come from boredom as can the pursuit of new hobbies. Career changes are made possible by boredom too.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the daily grind of life that we don’t take a moment to question what we’re doing and where we are going. I hope more people give themselves the space to be bored after this pandemic because I think it’s essential in life.

Lesson #4: Humans Are Remarkably Resilient

I am, by nature, quite an anxious person who worries a lot about future events and ruminates about past mistakes. If you told me 6 months ago that a global pandemic would wreak havoc upon society within the next few months, I probably would’ve had a panic attack.

A strange thing happens though when you actually live through this type of situation: you get used to it. Despite the huge shift in how we live our lives, I’ve noticed my anxiety has paradoxically lessened.

Observing people around me, I’ve been both impressed and surprised with the resilience we’re all showing. Having to stay at home and keep contact with others to a minimum is hardly wartime, but it’s still a huge and rapid shift in how we live. We’ve (mostly) coped admirably.

Lesson #5: The Present Moment is Paramount

When people like Alan Watts or Ram Dass spoke about the present moment and its importance, I tend to intellectually agree with what they were saying rather than experientially knowing it.

However, I believe we’ve all learned just how fragile and delicate the balance of life is during this pandemic. And correspondingly, we can all see the reality of how important the present moment is. I delved further in another post on how coronavirus helps us deal with our mortality.

The present is where life happens. And life can be taken from us in a flash, so it makes no sense not to try and pay attention to life as it happens.

Whether you’re watching television, brushing your teeth, learning a song on the guitar, or playing with your child, own every moment and be there for it.

That’s what I can muster up at the moment, as I sit here reflecting about these strange times. I hope some of these lessons will stick.

Yours sincerely,

Ronan

The post A Letter to Future Generations About Living During the Coronvavirus Pandemic appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

At the top, as the sweat drips from your forehead in Bangkok’s shirt-drenching humidity and searing heat, you feel the fruits of your labor were very much worth it. Greeting you is an open-air rooftop courtyard offering panoramic views of Bangkok as far as the vision stretches. At the center of the rooftop is a classic Thai Buddhist stupa.

Look in one direction and your eyes are drawn to the high-rise office buildings, condos, and shopping malls that dot the Sukhumvit and Silom areas of modern Bangkok. Gaze in another direction and you get a unique view of Bangkok’s most beautiful temples, lining up along the Chao Phraya River; from the Grand Palace to Wat Arun.

Start to examine what you see more carefully, and you’ll notice the oft-missed details of Bangkok to the casual visitor; its slums and canals teeming with life, and its abandoned buildings, all of which contribute in their own way to Bangkok’s gritty charm.

It’s natural to feel a wave of gratitude when you climb to the top of an underrated gem like Wat Saket. This gratitude stems from having the freedom to explore one of the planet’s great cities.

It’s a feeling of gratitude that’s particularly pertinent at a time in which the citizens of another huge city (Wuhan) are on lockdown due to the Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) epidemic. Some Wuhan residents have developed such cabin fever that they’ve taken to running entire marathons around their living rooms.

The Vultures of Bangkok

As you descend from atop Wat Saket, this time via a different flight of 300 steps, you come to one of Bangkok’s most eerie monuments. Greeting you are statues of four Thai people looking on with almost resigned expressions as huge vultures feast on a corpse.

Wondering what the fresh hell this monument depicts, you naturally read the description. In the late 19th century, circa 1890, a devastating cholera outbreak spread throughout Southeast Asia, reaching Bangkok via Penang in Malaysia.

Cholera is a relatively mild illness if treated early, although it was often fatal if you contracted it back in those days of relatively primitive healthcare. In Bangkok, thousands of people died, and many of their bodies were brought to Wat Saket for cremation.

The pace of deaths was too fast for the temple to cope with, and dead bodies were often left outside to decay. This is where the vultures enter the story. Historical records around the time detail huge swathes of vultures perched along the temple’s winding stairs, lunching on the dead with reckless abandon.

A Sense of Perspective

It would be hyperbole to assume a similar scenario will happen with the current coronavirus outbreak. Modern containment measures are excellent and healthcare authorities are much better equipped to cope with the worst outcomes.

Still, Bangkok’s eeriest monument gives passers-by a real sense of perspective about the havoc that epidemics can cause and the utter helplessness of humans when sh*t really hits the fan.

It also reinforces the gratitude I mentioned earlier; anyone reading this article can consider themselves charmed to live in an era of scientific progress such that even when outbreaks of new illnesses occur, we are typically spared from such horrible sights.

The post This Eerie Bangkok Monument is a Stark Reminder of Past Epidemics appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

As an Irish person, it is almost a cultural more to consume a lot of alcohol in my country. When young Irish people drink on the weekend, we generally don’t do it with the sole aim of enjoying our drinks. Without wanting to speak for the few who are able to moderate, young Irish people tend to drink booze to get shitfaced. The enjoyment of what we’re drinking is a happy byproduct of that aim. Older people may or may not be just as bad at moderating their alcohol consumption.

Drinking booze heavily isn’t a problem limited to the people of Ireland. But in a country famed for its nightlife and the “craic” we have, it’s fair to say we are perhaps more known for heavy drinking than most other countries. The stereotype of an Irishman is a guy with a funny accent and a pint of Guinness in his hand at all times.

Personally, I’ve teetered on the edge of excess alcohol consumption for much of my 20s. I don’t drink every day but when I imbibe, I indulge heavily. I don’t stop at 2 or 3 beers; it’s more like 6 or 7…go hard or go home and all that jazz. In my early to mid-20s, it was often 9 or 10 drinks.

A big problem of drinking heavily is that drinking in excess leads to really bad hangover anxiety for some people the next day. I’m particularly prone to bouts of “hangxiety” that leave me unproductive and wanting to indulge in escapist behaviors like mindlessly surfing the Internet.

What is Hangxiety and Why Does Alcohol Cause It?

According to an article in The Guardian, hangover anxiety occurs because alcohol messes with the delicate balance of neurotransmitters in the brain. The relaxed feeling when we drink comes from alcohol’s dual impact of increased GABA and decreased glutamine. The more we drink, the more profound the impact on brain chemistry.

Wanting to get us back to homeostasis, the body tries to overcompensate for these altered levels of chemical messengers in the brain. GABA reduces and we get a spike in glutamate. The result is a quite debilitating physical and psychological anxiety that can last an entire day.

Most people, myself included, are fully aware that alcohol is ultimately a poison and isn’t very good for the human body in large amounts. I still continued to indulge throughout my 20s in full knowledge of this fact, and I think part of that was because of a subconscious feeling of invincibility that many twentysomethings feel. We think we can do all sorts of damage to our young bodies and we will withstand it.

There is also the perspective that living is ultimately bad for the human body because we all die regardless of whether a drop of wine ever crosses our lips. This leads to the somewhat hedonistic viewpoint that we might as well enjoy ourselves while we are alive.

Questioning the Value of Drinking Alcohol

It is only when a behavior begins to cause more problems than it’s worth that people start to question it. For much of my 20s, I considered the trade-off of losing an entire day worth it so I could have fun for a few hours the night before. When I truly considered how much of my life I was losing to hangover anxiety, I started to rethink why I drink. Borrowing happiness from the next day is not really a behavior that provides value to my life.

I also had a flash of insight one day while hungover. I told myself I had enjoyed my night out, but then when I tried to think back to the night before and what conversations I had, much of it was either mundane stuff or just a blank space of not being able to remember. The actual fun part was before the drinking when I played pool with a friend.

This is not to say that drinking alcohol is not fun; it most certainly is. It quells my overactive mind, it reduces inhibitions, it makes me feel way more talkative, and I become much more present. Oh, and Guinness tastes great! But if the net effect of those benefits is to make me miss out on 52 days (and the rest) each year, I started to wonder if it was worth it.

Living in congruence with your values is a pillar of building a content or happy life. If you say you value your health and then you go out and get shitfaced once or twice each week, a gap emerges between your values and your behavior that ultimately makes you feel unhappy.

Philosophers on Alcohol

When searching for wisdom and advice on a topic, I often find it is helpful to consider the perspectives and opinions of philosophers, whether past or present. I find philosophical insight useful because, well, philosophers are/were smarter people than me.

The first philosopher that springs to mind is Nietzche, who was very anti-booze. In a famous quote about the complacency and escapism alcohol encourages, Nietzche said,

But this [German] people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.

It’s clear that to Nietzche, alcohol dulls us into a passive state of mind in which we are avoiding confronting life’s struggles. For Nietzche, confronting life’s struggles is the path to pursuing greatness; it’s where great works of art and great ideas come from.

The Roman Stoic Seneca had a different view on alcohol that is more in line with modern government recommendations on alcohol intake.

In his book, On The Shortness of Life, Seneca says, “There is a healthy moderation in wine…occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication for it does wash away cares. But we must not do this often in case the mind acquires a bad habit.”

So, Seneca’s overall view is that we should have a few drinks now and then to turn off the relentless stream of thoughts and give the mind time to relax. He also thinks getting drunk occasionally isn’t too harmful but that we shouldn’t get drunk often. This is a slightly more relaxed view than most government recommendations on alcohol consumption, which advise moderation and refraining from binge drinking.

Let’s now consider the Buddha’s thoughts on alcohol. Gautama Buddha was a philosopher of the mind so I feel his opinions are worth considering. On his noble Eightfold Path to the cessation of suffering, the Buddha advises not trading in intoxicants in the fifth precept. But this is not an instruction to avoid alcohol.

Actually, different schools of Buddhism interpret this precept in different ways, probably reflecting that similar to the game of Chinese whispers, messages get distorted as they are heard and interpreted by different people with different schools of thought. Theravada, Tibetan, and Mahayana Buddhists all have different ideas on the fifth precept and what it means.

Coming back to the overall idea in Buddhism of The Middle Way, it’s probably fair to say that drinking alcohol to the point of intoxication isn’t advocated, but neither is complete abstention. The entire ethos of The Middle Way is to find that middle ground between the extremes of overindulgence in pleasurable things and completely denying yourself of any pleasure. In other words, everything in moderation.

Scientific Consensus on Booze

In a landmark epidemiological study published in The Lancet in 2018, researchers rather disappointingly found that there is no level of alcohol consumption that improves health.

A 2015 study on mental health and alcohol use in Finland found that frequent binge drinking leads to poor mental health and psychological distress. “Frequent” in this study was defined as binge drinking more regularly than once per month.

So, Should You Go Teetotal? 

Ultimately, choosing whether to drink is a personal decision that involves weighing up what alcohol adds to your life versus what it takes away from it. I certainly am not against people having vices in life. Because I find it challenging to moderate my intake, I think my body needs a break so I can properly evaluate what I am missing out on.

I think if there is too much of a difference between the way someone feels while drinking compared to how they feel when sober, this is a warning sign that alcohol is being used as a coping mechanism for conditions that would be better treated with therapy or prescribed medication. And for obvious reasons that should go without saying, alcoholics need to get appropriate help and abstain for life.

I think if you can moderate your intake there is nothing too wrong with a glass of wine with dinner or a pint of beer while watching a football match. Getting tipsy, by which I mean that really enjoyable relaxed and buzzed feeling that happens after 2-4 drinks, is probably fine once in a while too. But drinking to get wasted and doing so every week? Probably not a good idea.

Try a 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge

I would advocate giving up alcohol for a decent stretch of time and carefully noting how your life changes. 30 days should be sufficient. Get a notepad or a journal and at the end of each day, jot down some observations about how your life is different. Ask yourself some of the following questions.

Do you waste less time? Do you become more productive? Do you feel more mental clarity? Does your physical health feel better? Is your social life more varied than just going out for pints? Do you feel more or less anxious?

If nothing much changes, you can always go back to booze. If you find 30 days without alcohol to be an enormously difficult task, that might be indicative of excess consumption.

Either way, as with fire, always remember that alcohol is a good servant but a bad master. Sláinte!

The post Should You Drink Alcohol? Here’s What Philosophers and Science Say appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Where the fresh hell did those 9 months go? I turn 29 in nine days and I’ve noticed this phenomenon of time speeding up every year; something that pretty much every adult over 20 can relate to. Those three months of holidays back in school used to feel like three years. Now, three months feels more like three weeks.

I’ve used my bemusement and general despondency about time flying so fast as the inspiration for this post exploring why time speeds up as we get older. I think it’s also an ample opportunity to get a conversation going about some possible ways to alter our perception of time (and no, I’m not going to suggest LSD!).

Why Does Time Speed up as we Age?

There are a number of reasons for this universally shared perception of time moving faster as we age. The first and probably most explanatory is time as a matter of proportion. When you are 5 years old, one year is twenty percent of your life. When you are 52 years old, one year is not even 2 percent of your lifespan. It’s logical that less than two percent of your lifespan feels a tad shorter than twenty percent.

This Washington Post article provides some useful graphics to visually reinforce how proportion makes such a difference to how we perceive time.

A second reason time flies as you age is that your biology is different as an adult compared to when you were a kid. I vividly remember waiting for Christmas each year on December 1st and feeling like it was ten years away. There are differences in working memory, attention, and executive function between the adult and kid brain, which suggests a possibly slower perception of time for kids.

However, these biological differences are redundant in late childhood, so it appears the proportional idea of time is the best one for explaining why years seem to go by increasingly faster as we age.

What is the Holiday Paradox?

The Holiday Paradox is an interesting phenomenon of perception in which a holiday feels like it flies by while you are experiencing it, but in retrospect, you perceive it as lasting longer. Psychology writer Claudia Hammond coined the term “Holiday Paradox” in her book Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception.

The explanation for the holiday paradox is that novel experiences while you are abroad create a bundle of new and unique memories that can make your trip seem longer in hindsight. When you enter that post-trip nostalgia reflection, a three-day getaway to a new city can feel like you were there for two weeks.

Want to Slow Down Time? Seek Out New Experiences

The Holiday Paradox offers a unique opportunity to contemplate how we might all combat the seemingly relentless speeding up of time. By regularly seeking out new experiences without necessarily going on a holiday, you create more memories so that retrospectively, it feels like time has passed more slowly.

It appears that by getting bogged down in routine mundanity, our lives pass us by without us even realizing it. The key then is to integrate novelty in your life in as many ways as possible. An unimaginable variety of new experiences await all of us if we’d just venture outside our comfort zones. And going outside our comfort zones makes life feel richer and longer.

Speaking to myself as much as you, the reader; take up a martial art, join a cooking class, get piano lessons, go camping. Any time you do things outside your normal routine, you create many new memories and you can alter how fast you perceive time to be moving.

In an interesting way, this circles back to how differently we perceive time as adults compared to as kids. Constantly seeking out new experiences and learning new things resembles how you spend your time in childhood. Many of us fall victim to comfort zones when we get older and I’m one of the worst culprits.

Mindfulness Meditation and Altered Time Perception

Touted as a panacea treatment for every ailment from stress to depression to anger, you’ve probably heard a lot about mindfulness meditation in recent years. When your rolled eyes return from the direction of the sky to focus back on this article, I’ll happily inform you that mindfulness meditation can also alter your perception of time.

An interesting 2013 study on the effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception found that 10-minute periods of guided audio meditation caused participants to overestimate durations of time. The control group listened to an excerpt from The Hobbit, which didn’t lead to any change in estimations of durations of time.

What is even more intriguing about the study is that the effect occurred after just a single meditation session. The researchers who carried out the study speculated that the experience of shifting your attentional focus inwards during mindfulness meditation techniques slows down time perception.

From my own experience with meditation, this seems plausible. Force any beginner meditator to meditate for 10 minutes and those ten minutes will feel more like 20. However, from the perspective of someone who considers himself an intermediate meditator by now, it’s interesting that time seems to dissipate completely as a subjective perception when you get deeper into meditation. It is as if time no longer exists.

I think the overall long-term effect of meditation extrapolated out to the rest of our time is that it can make the days, months, and years feel longer. Because long-term meditators get less caught up in the constant chatter of their minds, they are more focused on the “Now”, as Eckhart Tolle likes to call the present moment. Being more present in life lets you appreciate its richness of experiences more fully and better process those experiences.

Seneca on Time

People have been pondering the nature of time since, well, time immemorial. One man who expressed his views on how much time people tend to waste in life was the Stoic philosopher, Seneca. In his book, On the Shortness of Life, Seneca reflects that people tend to complain about how short life is while squandering most of it on meaningless crap.

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Considering I’ve just spent 20 minutes reading the comments section under (yet another) an article on The Guardian about Brexit, I can’t exactly disagree with Mr. Seneca. The Roman Stoic argues that people fritter time away as if destined to live forever, saying that “the greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.”

I’ll probably revisit this post five months after my 29th birthday when I turn 30, but for now, I’ll make it my aim try and spend the final year of my 20s in such a way that it actually feels like a year. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

The post The Holiday Paradox, Time Flying, and Altering Your Perception of Time appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Originally launched on Christmas Eve 2009, the Joe Rogan Experience is one of the world’s most successful podcasts. Rogan himself wears many hats; aside from running his JRE podcast, he is also a UFC commentator, a standup comedian, and a martial arts fanatic.

His work ethic is tremendous. This is a man who embraces putting himself under mental and physical stress. As Rogan himself once said, “One of the most fascinating lessons I’ve absorbed about life is that the struggle is good.”

Joe gets a lot of unnecessary flak from certain quarters. He is often accused of being a gateway to the alt-right even though he has several times said he leans to the left on the political spectrum. He has also offered opinions that back that up. I think he also doesn’t get enough credit for being able to hold intelligent discussions with some of the smartest people on the planet.

Even though it is marketed as a primarily comedic podcast, in my opinion, by far the best guests have been non-comedians. Rogan often recruits people at the top of their game in fields other than comedy, some of whom have veered between being really fascinating to downright educational. Rogan really shines as an interviewer because he asks intelligent questions and lets the other person do most of the talking.

I’ve decided to write here about five JRE episodes I found to be incredibly informative. I’ll also provide some key takeaways from each episode for those of you who don’t have the time to go and listen to them.

1. The Science of Aging with David Sinclair – Episode #1234

David Sinclair is an Australian biologist who works at the forefront of anti-aging science. It was insightful to hear Sinclair describe how he approaches aging as a disease to be treated rather than an inextricable part of life.

In this JRE episode, Sinclair presents some of his main research and discoveries on how aging can potentially be slowed down. Here are some key takeaways you might find useful:

• Intermittent fasting, where you stop eating for 14 to 20 hours each day, helps slow down the aging process and improve longevity.
• Resveratrol shows great promise in fighting aging. This plant phenol is perhaps best known as a component of red wine, however, Sinclair recommends supplementing with resveratrol at 500mg per day. Here is a link to a high-quality resveratrol supplement on Amazon.
• Another supplement David Sinclair recommends as being helpful for slowing down the aging process is Nicotinamide Riboside (NR). He takes 500 mg each morning. Here is an NR supplement you can get by an excellent company named Tru Niagen.
• Exercise and putting the body under temperature stress can help to fight aging. Stress doesn’t mean doing something silly like climbing a dangerous mountain in freezing temperatures. Sinclair recommends going to the sauna once or twice per week in addition to exercising daily. You could also try cryotherapy if it’s affordable/available to you.

2. Nutritional  Science with Dr. Rhonda Patrick – #1178

Rhonda Patrick has appeared several times on JRE at this stage and each time she has been really interesting to listen to. The latest appearance came in episode 1178, during which the nutritional health expert revealed the details of hordes of interesting studies and the latest research in the field of nutritional science.

Here are some of the key takeaways from Rhonda Patrick on JRE episode 1178:

• The gut microbiome plays a hugely important role in human health and disease. Fasting has positive benefits for the gut microbiome. Most likely, a prolonged 48-hour fast three to four times per year will be of best help but intermittent fasting also brings positive changes.
• Sulforaphane, a compound found in high concentrations in broccoli sprouts, has incredibly potent benefits for many aspects of health. Dr.Patrick revealed research showing sulforaphane lowered biomarkers for prostate cancer, it promotes excretion of harmful contaminants from air pollution, and it decreases oxidative DNA damage.
• Fish oil can lower cardiovascular disease risk by up to 30 percent.
• Using the sauna before working out reduces muscle soreness. Furthermore, saunas can provide anti-inflammatory benefits to the body.

3. Mushrooms and Mycology with Paul Stamets – #1035

I challenge anyone to listen to this podcast and not feel like you could listen to Paul Stamets speak about fungi for eternity. This is a man who has spent his life studying the mysterious and frequently mind-blowing world of fungi.

Here are some of the main interesting things learned from listening to Paul Stamets on JRE:

• Lion’s mane mushrooms promote neurogenesis, which means they help produce neural stem cells and reduce cognitive decline.
• Humans are remarkably similar to fungi, in fact, we descended from them and we share more traits in common with them than any other kingdom.
• The largest living organism in the world is a type of honey mushroom which is an incredible 2,200 acres in size.
• Enoki mushrooms have potentially potent anti-cancer effects. One epidemiological study conducted in Japan uncovered a marked decline in cancer rates among people who consumed enoki mushrooms regularly.

4. Physics and Cosmology with Brian Cox – #1233

Brian Cox is a physicist hailing from Oldham, England. Not only is he incredibly intelligent, but Cox is fascinating to listen to and he seems like a genuinely nice person to speak with. Cox drew inspiration for learning about physics from Carl Sagan’s critically-acclaimed television series and book, Cosmos.

Here are some of the more interesting cosmological takeaways that Brian Cox gave us as food for thought in JRE number 1233:

• There are an estimated 20 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone. The Milky Way is one of an estimated one hundred billion galaxies in the universe! So, where the hell is everybody and why haven’t they contacted us? At this point, I’ll take the opportunity to link you to one of the best articles on the Internet – The Fermi Paradox.
• The universe is composed of 5 times as much of a mysterious type of matter known as dark matter as there is normal matter. Dark matter interacts extremely weakly with normal matter, which is why we can’t notice it.
• The universe is made up of 70 percent dark energy, which is responsible for the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, completely contrary to what scientists thought. The presence of this dark energy aligns with Einstein’s original equations which featured a so-called cosmological constant.

5. Psychedelic research with Michael Pollan – #1121

Michael Pollan is an award-winning journalist and author who appeared on JRE back in 2018 to coincide with the release of his new book, How to Change Your Mind, which explores some of the profound positive impacts that psychedelics can have on a variety of mental illnesses. The book itself is an amazing read, and the podcast discussion is based on much of the book’s material. However, Pollan is as interesting to listen to as he is to read.

Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from Pollan’s appearance on JRE:

• It’s highly likely, according to Pollan, that psychedelic use influenced the development of religious ideas. He makes reference to the example of the Greeks who had profound psychedelic experiences after drinking wine, which was most likely fortified with an as yet unknown psychedelic substance.
• Ingesting psilocybin while terminally ill has profound impacts on patients’ fears about death. In fact, the vast majority of people in a particular study showed marked alleviation of death anxiety after their psilocybin experience.
• When researchers imaged the brains of people during psychedelic trips using fMRI technology, they found a huge reduction of activity in a region known as the default mode network. This region can be regarded as the “location” of our egos. The fact that activity is reduced here upon ingestion of psychedelics coincides with what many trip reports describe as the disappearance of boundaries between self and other.

Closing Thoughts

I’m going to wrap up this post now on my favourite and most informative Joe Rogan Experience podcast episodes. I hope you’ve learned something interesting in this article but I’d really recommend listening to the above podcasts in full if you have the time.

Even if you have no interest in the normal eclectic mix of standup comedians or fighters that Rogan invites onto his podcast, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for scientists, authors, journalists and intellectuals who frequently appear on the show.

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