The Blank Page 2

The blank page 2 / ... (infinity)

I see the thumb from the office window. Giving all us office-workers a big thumbs up - maybe that was the idea behind it.

We probably need more than a 40 foot high sculpture of a thumb to get us motivated.

How come you don't have motivational coaches in most jobs. Anything outside of sports?

If we did have motivators how much better would we perform?

What would be the increase in 'productivity'? The ROI (return on investment) - of paying the coaches and the time spent getting coached?

Would such a method be more or less effective than other methods such as:

- more pay

- more breaks

- more perks (better / free coffee)

If you could change one thing (with the aim of the highest increase in productivity) what would you change?

I think for me it would have to be outsourcing all the boring, repetitive, administrative, secretarial-type tasks (getting someone less qualified and more interested in that kind of thing to do them) and to leave me free to concentrate on the more interesting, strategic, reflective, problem-solving parts of the job.

Ideally I would just spend time thinking about stuff and then communicating my thoughts / conclusions to other people in the organisation who would then act upon them.

Taking that to the extreme, I'd never have to do the same thing twice because that would be repetitive and hence boring. I would always be working on new challenges; new problems; new theories to propose and test out; new conclusions to reach; new actions / improvements based on those conclusions.

The Blank Page 1

The Blank Page 1 by Andrew Cairns

The page is blank but I will endeavour to fill it with writing.

How blank is a page really? Is it predestined to be written on, drawn on, destroyed or recycled? Or does the writer have total control

How blank is a new born baby (or earlier stage embryo)? Do the environment and genetic inheritance totally determine his personality, his actions, his thoughts? 

Do you have freedom of thought? What are the limits?  

100 billion neurons (give or take). 100 trillion synapses. At any one time, only about 10% of the neurons are actually "firing". [cf. 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe].

10¹⁶ operations per second (10¹⁵ synapses operating at about 10 impulses/second)

60*60*24*365*80 = 2 522 880 000 seconds in a lifetime

=> 2.5 * 10²⁵ operations per lifetime (or thoughts)

Scraped from the net:

Massive oversimplification:

Consider that there are approximately 1 trillion neural connections in the human brain. For simplicity sake, assume that any given instant, each connection is either "on" or "off" (firing or not firing). Then the number of possible states is two raised the power of one trillion. That's a finite number, but even if humanity survived until the heat death of the universe, we couldn't exhaust a measurable fraction of the possible mental states.
posted by justkevin at 8:11 AM on January 23, 2006

Based on this simplification, possible thoughts (mental states for 1 human) : 2 to the power of 100 000 000 000 000 = approx 10⁴² operations

Implies 10¹⁷ lifetimes required to exhaust all possible thoughts.

i.e. 10⁵ trillion humans over the total lifespan of humanity (estimates are only 1.2 trillion Doomsday argument (DA)). Scraped from Wikipedia.

Assuming that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion and a life expectancy of 80 years, it can be estimated that the remaining 1140 billion humans will be born in 9120 years. cf 60 billion born so far.

If we survive another 5 billion years (estimated time left before the sun burns out) => approx 5 * 100 000 * 1000 billion humans = 5 * 10⁵ trillion humans would be able to exhaust 5 * the possible thoughts

Bit of a digression.

You would need to live 10⁵ trillion lifetimes to exhaust all possible thoughts (mental states).

So we can safely say - the limits are only imposed by the physical synapse limits of the brain, but within your lifetime you are free to have about 10²⁵ thoughts out of a possible 10⁴² - leaves a lot of scope.

So your brain offers you the possibility of freedom of thought, but your genetics and environment are heavily pounding the brain into certain thought patterns. 

If you could but for a few minutes escape all environmental and genetic restraints, then what would your brain be capable of? Huge originality. Perhaps this is why the most original thinkers / people who put their brains to the most original use have strange or 'damaged' brains - e.g. Einstein, people with Autism).

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Favourite quote from this book:
"Soon all that would remain of Vishram Society would be the old banyan; and each time there was a wind, its leaves brushed against the abandoned guard's booth like a child trying to stir a dead thing to life." - Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga.