At some point in this writing process, I was struck with what seemed like the explanation for why I’ve been able to stick with an unshakable rejection of free will, despite the bummers of feelings it can evoke.

Since my teenage years, I’ve struggled with depression. Now and then, I’m completely free of it, and life seems like hiking above the tree line on a spectacular snow-capped mountain.

Most of the time, though, it is just beneath the surface. And sometimes it incapacitates me.

And I think that the depressions explain a lot.

Bummed out by the scientific evidence that there’s no free will?

Try looking at your children, your perfect, beautiful children, playing and laughing, and somehow this seems so sad that your chest constricts enough to make you whimper for an instant.

After that, dealing with the fact that our microtubules don’t set us free is a piece of cake.

Robert Sapolsky, Determined

It’s hard to believe this is really life, but if it is a dream (and is it?) I can’t just wait until I wake up. A dream can’t last this long or be so monotonous. That means I’ve actually been experiencing this all these years. How horrible this illness is! I still can’t get a grip on myself, can’t figure out what I was like before, what’s happened to me . . .

But once in a while, when I consider what my mind is like now, I wonder: Is this really me? Am I dreaming or is this for real? It’s lasted too long now to be a dream, that sort of thing doesn’t happen, particularly when you know time is passing so quickly. But if this is life, and not a dream, why am I still sick?

Two ideas keep running through my head: I keep telling myself my life is over, that I’m of no use to anyone but will stay this way until I die, which probably won’t be long now. On the other hand, something keeps insisting I have to live, that time can heal everything, that maybe all I need is the right medicine and time to recover.

AR Luria, Man With Shattered World

This is not a story I will remember properly. It lives only in the irrational, as does a dream.

My rational mind, the bully, will strong-arm it away from me and fill in the blanks, add explanations, because it cannot let it be. This bully contaminates the dream, changes it into something smaller, manageable, tellable.

The dream as it is cannot be told. So it is with this story. In the remembering or telling, it becomes something else, and so the truth of it is destroyed.

And I go on with my life, with my anemic attempts to portray the world in its fullness.

Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

What if you’d rather not know?

You may try to modify the explanation—without spoiling its agreement with observations, and with other ideas for which you have no good alternatives.

You will fail.

That is what good explanation does for you: it makes it harder for you to fool yourself.

David Deutsch, Beginning Of Infinity

Nature’s imagination is so much greater than Man’s
She’s never gonna let us relax
Behold! Inconceivable nature of Nature!

Rich Feynman

Thoughts, like placebos, are chemically inert but biologically active.

P Willy

Do cows get embarrassed?
Is it only humans who can get embarrassed?

What emotions do we think carrots are capable of?
Can you shame a parsnip?

Philomena

Free Willy, P Willy = P? P or NP?

P or (N)ought P (NP), tis (pis) that the question?

“I gotta pee.”

P Willy Frees Willy, Pees Freely.

P Willy