The User Illusion by Tor Norretrandes - A Book Review

Also posted on MouthShut. 

Is human a conscious, rational being? Can we explain everything that happens to us or around us? Are all our (re)actions, decisions, choices in life done consciously? One would be taken aback if I were( sorry if the author and the science) to tell you that Consciousness plays hardly any role in our lives.

"To be aware of an experience means that it has passed"

How do you explain dreams? Am sure all of us would have at least one dream that came true. Not day dreams, but dreams - things that we saw, felt or perceived when we were asleep - unconscious. How do you explain that?  How about De Ja Vu? What about the first impressions that we frame of people? Without knowing a thing about a person, what is it that tells us about the person that lets you perceive and frame an impression? When we see a thing or place, how much of it is from our memory or from first hand perception?

"The least interesting aspect of good conversation is what is actually said. What is more interesting is all the deliberations and emotions that take place simultaneously"

Why are we so good are doing automated, repeated tasks, say driving/ cycling? Are we consciously driving all the time? All these automated tasks are best done when we are unaware/ unconscious. The moment we become conscious, we in fact falter( that is what happens when we are under pressure ). Say if you were to consciously speak in a foreign language that you recently learnt, you would fumble.

"The words are merely references to something not present"

Sleepwalking, Blindsight, Love at first Sight,  and many more things are really not results of consciousness. All these happen without your conscious. You are conscious of only the problem and the solution, but the process of arriving at solution is not through conscious. That is consciousness is only an implementer, there is something else, a silent, hidden observer that really is taking decisions. In effect consciousness is discarded/ filtered information, that is important to you. But the filtering is not done by consciousness. If things were so simple, Artificial Intelligence could have handed over mental activities from human to machines. No machine is as intelligent as a man is. All they are good at is "Computation".

"It is not what we say to each other every day that establishes all the meaning and beauty and truth, it is everything we think before we speak"

Well that is a load of information or processed discarded information? Too many questions. I happened to stumble upon this book through Quora. I was following a post on a lazy day and many mentioned how insightful this book "The User Illusion" by  Tor Norretrandes is. And happened to get hands on this book in a completely unexpected way. This books is very intriguing, though at times it gets into too much theory, science and even history. The book is divided into four parts - Computation, Communication, Consciousness and Composure. First two chapters are tough to get through. Many a times it was too much for me to read or process all that data. The author tries to explain about consciousness from different scientific fields - Thermodynamics, Information Theory, Psychology, Chaos Theory etc. This is where he walks us through the history of science and how that the theory of consciousness was born way back during 1850's as Maxwell's Demon.

"Is talking the smallest part of conversation?"

Third chapter is the real gist of this book. He explains about Consciousness, the half-a-second delay, how much time the consciousness lags behind. Our reactions, decisions are lot quicker but till we are aware of them we cannot act. There is a hell lot of information that gets into the brain through different senses (over 11 millions of bits of information every second), eye, skin, ear, nose, and mouth whereas our consciousness can only process 40 bits per second. Hence the brain processes all these information filters most of it, and gives us(consciousness) only what is important to us. And the process of this exformation( filtering information) happens unconsciously. Most of our what we experience, and most of what we do is unconscious. Isn't that surprising?

“Civilization is about removing information about our surroundings; discarding information about nature so our senses are not burdened with all that information and our consciousness can concentrate on other matters.”  

Last chapter is about how we perceive world and what it really is. As humans we tend to seek predictability. We want to have a theory to everything, reason out and if possible find a formula which can be applied to give expected results.  But this is not true. Consciousness is gating the tremendous possibilities. Consciousness is everything put in order, Subconscious is chaos. Can we manage Chaos? Is a human being more than what he thinks he is, is he more than what is his consciousness?  Is consciousness an evolution to cope up with the complex world?

"A thing not structured and organized contains more information, because it is more difficult to describe"

"You sense far more than you are conscious of. Whether you want to or not"

Hat-trick

A Hat-trick! Well not exactly 3 times in a row, but last Saturday one of my post got paid, the third time! Some thoughts(purely non-fiction) scribbled on internet, intranet that gave me returns in the form of cash, and an even more valuable payout a book(User Illusion - right now half into this book and am awestruck, I just hope to find little more time to complete this one).

I started to wonder what clicks the best in reading/ writing world - simple open thoughts or complicated fiction? Right now am reading two opposite works. User Illusion, purely a science(psychology) supported by facts, theories etc. And Mahabharata, a true epic which I believe is totally a fictional book. I find both equally mesmerizing. I get goosebumps knowing how the mind works, reacts and process what is fed to it and facts, experiments associated with it from the book User Illusion. On the other hand - Mahabharata, I just cannot fathom this marvelous creative work with so many characters, so many twists, tales, and moral values. I cannot imagine the author(s) for their creativity back in those times. I did watch endless episodes of Mahabharata serials on TV when I was a kid, and have been hearing about how great a story it is all my life. But I truly got interested in it recently through my Husband. He introduced me yet again to Mahabharata. There is no Black and White in this epic. Everything and every character has shades of grey. This seems to be the only epic that has the highest number of words in the world. I hope to write a review soon on this someday, if I could get to read the authentic version of it from the beginning to the end. It seems there are answers to every situation or every question one faces in their life in this epic. Well is this just an epic or has it really happened? I favor the former. Given there are so many characters. My research did not show any solid proofs yet to prove that it really happened. But if there are any which I have not found yet I would be more than happy to know that the story did take place. At least part of it. How much we want to tie up everything to reality?

Anyway, I am a more practical person, and if am given a choice to dream consciously, I would still put in the logic, think of the plausibility, feasibility and then imagine. To write fiction one should have the ability to think or imagine beyond the boundaries, one needs to let go of their inhibitions. Most importantly one need to be able to lie. Show something as real as life though it is not. I have a strong influence of who I am on each of my writings. I want all these writing a reflection of me. This thought does scare me cause am letting myself out in the open for anyone to know me!

Another question that puzzles me is how can a single author write so many complex emotions? Does it require for them to feel each of these emotions? Can one write without experiencing the situation? Is that what called creativity? Or is writing actually not a true creative act but correlating act? Relating ones pain, happiness, and such at a different intensity in a different situation? Did that sound complicated? Yeah!

So I stick to writing simple thoughts for now. May be Mahabharata will influence me to writing fiction! May be!

Love Being A Woman

Are men to be blamed?

Am I feminist? I do not know! In fact I am more comfortable being among men rather than women. I met this woman from IT field and she is earning a decent salary working for an MNC. Married and a Mom. But if she has to step out of her house she needs her husband. One to take his  permission and second for him to escort her. I wonder how she comes to work everyday alone? She is not even allowed to touch the car, as apparently after she drove the car it had to be repaired. Can a car be damaged cause of the driver? Without any accident? She earns more than him and even contributes to most of their family expenses. To go to her Mom's place she needs him to approve, support and accompany her. What the hell, cant she just hop on a bus/ train and go on her own?  If she was assigned an onsite project would he take her and drop her at her workplace? Why are woman still so dependent on men? Why do they do this? Is the man to be blamed or these woman who like being taken care of by men and hence impose these disabilities on them? Without her husband she is a handicap who cannot go around anywhere on her own( work is an exception though - somehow!). And when I hear to women *cribbing* about this, not realizing the fault is theirs, I find it hard to keep my cool and listen to them. Am so afraid that I might snap out and say something that might hurt the other person. And who am I to get into their family matters anyway! So yeah am more comfortable being among men, who discuss stock market, cricket etc.

Men are given opportunities based on their potential while women are given opportunities based on their performance. Is it true?

I attending a corporate women leadership forum today. Women from different companies, with varied skills, positions and ages were there. All of us had one question. Repeatedly, over and over asked, discussed and debated. The issue was - MEN. Everything boiled down to dealing a man, unfortunately. Diversity! . How do you overcome this bias?

I am not sure this is true. But all those examples, case studies complemented it. However, there were exceptions too( all those panelists, key notes speakers - well yeah all these successful women). But the pyramid of women in leadership was too narrow and too steep. Stats say 50% of engineering college students are girls. So why is there only 5% when it comes to the top ladder?

What does it take to be a Man?

There was a man( Prakash Belawadi - a journalist, and an actor from the movie Madras Cafe) among the panelists too. He mentioned that all those aspects of being a woman should only be taken as an advantage when compared to men. Men should actually adopt these, rather than women trying to change/ see them as their negatives. A woman performs 9 out of 10 tasks assigned to her exceptionally well, but fails in 1. But she is stuck to that one failure. She admits it. Many women today saw it as being tactless in not being able to project the good to cover up the bad. Men like Prakash see it as being open and honest. Men go and meet anyone and make friends with him. They socialize over a coffee, smoke or a cocktail party. If a woman approaches or tries to be too social she is judged for her character. It does not matter what a man wears to a board meeting, but it matters what a woman wears. Say if a lady wore flip flops like Steve Jobs to one of the board meetings, would she even be considered a leader?

And if one knows women, this list would go on and on. One thing they are for no doubt good at is cribbing, expressing their emotions, problems. I personally think men are equally shy, socially uncomfortable. Men nowadays are into the kitchen. Into taking care of kids. I know of many of my colleagues who baby sit when their wifes HAD to go to work. I know of many men who do not treat you as a weaker gender but respect them for being their equal or more than that. We woman have so many advantages working for us - we have this unique intuition which is very important when you are directly working with clients. Our minds are more irrational than men. And on top of it, we can empathize better, connect better. We talk a lot, hence better communicators. So be yourself. A Woman. And be proud of this fact.

If at all someone is to be blamed for why women are where they are today, in countries especially like India - the women themselves.

The Book

What is the first thing you do when you buy a brand new book? Fresh from the print? Smell it? :-).

I tried my best to catch up with technology and read books online, on mobile, and all possible software's that try their best to give the same feel of reading a hardcover or a paperback . But could not get past even 10 pages. I love books - in their original form, as a hard copy. The sense of holding a book, turning those pages, folding them, all adds up to the experience of reading a book. Does not matter if it is a novel or a technical book. It has to be a printed hard copy. And if it is a hardcover, nothing like it! Just till few years back I used to maintain a diary, not a digital one but one in which I can write with my own hands, in my own handwriting. As if, someday when I read those words back, I can exactly feel those words and relive those moments.

And though I read each word of the book, including the cover, whats written on the front cover, back cover, acknowledgments, reviews ( with an exception of appendix though ) little did I pay attention to the book's cover or its design; may be I was too caught up with the saying - do not judge a book by its cover,  till I watched this TED Talk - Designing Books Is No Laughing Matter by Chip Kidd.  It is amazing to know how interesting his job is in designing book covers. All he gets from the author is a set of words or few sentences that gives the gist of the book and he has to design a book cover that summarizes the book.

I read this 900 pages book by a Japanese writer - IQ84, whose book cover is also designed by Kidd. The title of course caught my attention and I solely picked this book for its title. I had already decided that I would buy this book, and went on to read few reviews to convince myself of my decision. I did notice its cover and its design till I watched this talk. I had not even opened the book jacket till date, for I was not knowing the art or thought behind it. How can one design a book cover & jacket that explains a woman living in an alternate reality -  two parallel worlds?

How much work goes into packing words? Packing a story? And giving the reader that unique experience of reading it? Well, would I look at the book cover the next time I buy a book? Hell yeah! Time to go through my collection and spend sometime with the book covers and their design, which I had ignored. Sure, there are certain things which can never be replaced, especially by technology.

PS: Designing Books Is No Laughing Matter is hilarious as well as insightful.