Resurrection

In which we resurrect a thing to find, perhaps, a local optimum

Aaand… we’re back.

First, thanks for all the kind messages after my third-life (not quite midlife yet, I hope) breakdown in which I questioned life, the universe, and everything in between. I do that sometimes.

We begin the resurrection with a quote by author Elena Ferrante (from this interview):

I publish to be read. It’s the only thing that interests me about publication. So I employ all the strategies I know to capture the reader’s attention, stimulate curiosity, make the page as dense as possible and as easy as possible to turn. But once I have the reader’s attention I feel it is my right to pull it in whichever direction I choose. I don’t think the reader should be indulged as a consumer, because he isn’t one. Literature that indulges the tastes of the reader is a degraded literature. My goal is to disappoint the usual expectations and inspire new ones.

I think this nicely captures a tension a lot of writers struggle with. You want to be read, but you don’t want to give in to the allure of producing only empty clickbait. Yes, we are (unfortunately?) stuck in an attention economy where many wonderful things drown in a tide of empty posturing. C’est la 21st-century vie.

I especially appreciate the second half of the quote. I agree; I will not treat any of my readers as consumers. I will not indulge you. Instead, I hope to make you think, (dis)agree with me, and perhaps even grin from time to time.

Hence, Thinking Ahead will resurrect. Into what? That will evolve as we move along. Let me explain it with geneticist Sewall Wright’s fitness landscape. I am, after all, trained as a philosophically-inclined biologist and continue to find it a useful lens to observe life with.

Cue visual:

(Wikimedia commons, Randy Olson)

The idea here is that this virtual mountain range visualizes the relationship between genotypes and reproductive fitness. In short: the higher the peak, the more ‘fit’ the organism (in a specific social and environmental context). Of course, this is a coarse simplification of reality.

Why do I bring this up here?

As you can see, there are different peaks. The blue one on the left is the ‘global optimum’, or the best you can do within the prevailing conditions. The other peaks are ‘local optima’, or points that are pretty good, but not as ‘fit’ as the global optimum. The tricky part of those local optima is that if you want to move from them to a higher optimum, you have to go downhill first. In evolutionary terms, that means getting less fit, which natural selection will ‘punish’ you for. (To be fair, it is theoretically possible to jump across a fitness valley, but fairly unlikely. Another good thing to know: when conditions change, so does the fitness landscape.)

Get to the point, please.

Okay, okay. The point: whenever I try something, anything short of the global optimum feels like a complete failure. Including this newsletter. But, perhaps, a local optimum can be alright too. Or I’ll have to learn how to jump without getting stuck in a valley. I haven’t fully internalized that message yet, but I am trying. That’s the annoying thing about being attracted to potentials. At some point, you have to let them die by making them real and clicking publish. The horror. (I can endlessly agonize over even the tiniest decisions, can you tell?)

So, I will not set any expectations for Thinking Ahead. I will (try to) let it evolve as it sees fit (puns!). It will be a mishmash of ideas. It will have science, philosophy, psychology, wordplay, and all kinds of oddities. The frequency and schedule will be determined by other demands on my time and, to be honest, my whims.

I hope you stick around for the journey through Wonderland.