For my brother, on the occasion of his 60th birthday

Thank you Marek!

Sixty years old today! My brother Marek has been an inspiration to me throughout my adult life and has helped me develop my thinking significantly. Here are just a few of the ideas that he introduced me to over the past 40 years – ideas that have profoundly helped shape my worldview. An idea that resonates when you first hear of it, an idea that sticks in your mind - you expand upon; subsequent experience and subsequent reading proves it to be resilient, the idea goes on to form the foundations of your personal philosophy as it grows.

So - here's the list; regular readers of this blog will recognise many of the themes.

Thinking at the meta-level: this really helped me when I was struggling a bit with life in my mid-20s; strive to get out of a rut by constantly thinking one step above, then above than, then above that.

Altered states of consciousness: whether brought about by drink or drifting in and out of sleep of a morning, the notion of consciously altering the way your mind works was new to me.

Artificial Intelligence: Marek did his postgrad studies in this back in the 1980s! He was the first person to explain to me how expert systems would work, before the AI winter...

Zen Buddhism: Eastern mysticism in all its diverse richness, including tales of the Lung gom pah

Jewish mysticism – the Kabbalah, the esoteric wisdom hidden in plain sight

Complexity and chaos theory - mathematics at the root of it all

Fractals and Mandelbrot sets - repeating patterns scaling up and down into infinity

Deferred gratification - the joys of putting off to tomorrow that which could gratify instantly

Learned dependence - in society, a way of life in where a social group learns to depend on the landowner, the , the employer, the Welfare State...

Emergence - in cosmology, physics giving rise to chemistry, giving rise to biology, evolving into ever more complex forms

The Cambrian Explosion - weird and wonderful fossils found in the Burgess Shales as animal life first emerged from more primitive organisms in a very short time

Dyson spheres and Von Neumann machines, the Oort cloud and other fascinating astronomical concepts

Bayesian inference and cognitive bias in general - bad ways of thinking (and how to avoid them by thinking more critically - and indeed thinking at the meta-level).

The Hierarchy vs the Network - the old way and the new way to run society. Connected bottom-up power replacing top-down rule. No one hierarch dominating (it usually ends up a disaster - see Putin's Russia for example).

Distinguishing ‘train of thought’ from ‘stream of consciousness’

The moral dimension of cosmology – the place of good and evil in the Universe

Agency and free will - are we only doing that which we have been programmed to do?

Demand-avoidance syndrome - some people don't like to be asked to do something - and therefore don't like asking others to do something for them.

Gut flora and the virome - we are the sum product of ourselves plus all the bacteria and viruses that dwell within us and on us.

The primacy of the subjective conscious experience - probably the most important single idea that clarified and shaped my entire way of thinking

Being obsessively tidy in one small corner of one’s life, the remainder of it being a mess - recognise any relative you know?

Consciousness as being either granular/discrete units or a seamless continuum. The big question for those who consider consciousness to be universal, rather than just a epiphenomenon of emergence.

These ideas feel like they have been inspired from a higher plane, destined for me.

Selected reading list (of books that Marek has bought me):

Stuart Kaufman’s Humanity in a Creative Universe

David Eagleman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife

Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 

Daniel P. Bagge’s Unmasking Maskirovka

James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

Plus:

The paintings of Eric Ravilious

The box art of 'Revell’s Rembrandt', Jack Leynnman

The music of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, in particular, Slip Into This House from Easter Everywhere, and early American psychedelic music in general.

In my quest for understanding, I seek neither a leader nor followers, but someone that walks alongside me and discusses ideas and helps me develop them - that person is my brother.

Marek - for this wealth of ideas and concepts, I am truly grateful. But above all, you are an inspiration to me - what it means to be a human being.

This time last year:
Walking on (thick) ice
[Five consecutive nights of frost. This year? It's +7.8C outside tonight]

This time three years ago:
Kraków in winter

This time five years ago:

Jeziorki mid-January catch-up

This time six years ago:
On ice

This time seven years ago:
Tweeting and blogging

This time nine years ago:
The sad truth about the pavement for Karczunkowska

[Update - it's due in 2026.]

This time ten years ago:
Happy 50th birthday Marek!

This time 13 years ago:
A haul of wintery wonderfulness

This time 14 years ago:
Optimal way to work?

This time 15 years ago:
Highest point in Jeziorki 
(photos of the Rampa before demolition)