Do you binge on writers and thinkers — discover someone then proceed to devour all of their content?
Recently I’ve been enjoying Chris Williamson’s work. The latest issue of his weekly newsletter, 3 Minute Mondays, is packed with a lifetime’s worth of wisdom.
→ You are not your thoughts.
→ You are the sky, everything else is just the weather.
→ Your weirdness is your competitive advantage. No one can beat you at being you.
I’m also a huge fan of Chris’ podcast, Modern Wisdom.
I just finished listening to episode 379 with Rupert Sheldrake.
Rupert Sheldrake PhD is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of Morphic Resonance.
Morphic Resonance is the idea of mysterious telepathy-type connections between organisms and of collective memories within species.
I’d never heard of Dr. Sheldrake or Morphic Resonance before listening to this episode. The basic idea of his theory, as I understand it, is as follows:
- There is something like “memory” that exists across nature.
- What are often assumed to be immutable “laws of nature” are actually more like “habits of nature” that are learned and passed down over time.
Clearly some of his ideas are well outside of the scientific mainstream…
It seems plausible to me that birds know where to migrate each year, not because it’s hard coded in their DNA, but because they have some kind of collective habits or accumulated wisdom.
But Dr. Sheldrake also uses morphic resonance to explain things like how crystals form, and why he believes it’s easier to do the newspaper crossword puzzle if you wait a day (because so many other people have already solved it by then).
I have no idea whether Dr. Sheldrake’s theories are correct, but they’re certainly interesting. And I’m very much in agreement that not everything can be explained through the lens of pure materialism.
My favorite part of the episode comes towards the end, when they discuss if memories exist physically inside our brains.
We explored some similar ideas in my first InterIntellect salon earlier this year (I’m planning another one for November — more on that soon).
- Are our brains like hard drives — with thoughts and memories stored physically inside our heads?
- Or are they more like radio and television sets — tuning into signals that exist all around us?
Reach Out and Touch
Speaking of weird stuff in nature that’s hard to explain, check out this study I saw shared on twitter — apparently plants can “see” the size of a stick before touching it, but we don’t know how they do it.
Artificial Intelligence is Already Here?
I have a weird theory of my own that I shared in a twitter thread recently:
(You can read the full thread here).
Fall Bach Plan
For some reason, as soon as it gets a little colder and the leaves start falling, my cravings for classical music kick into overdrive.
I wrote this week’s newsletter while listening to Bach (recommended).
That’s all for this week. More soon…
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I write occasional emails to share what I’m thinking, learning, and doing. It’s all related to the idea of breaking free from the “default plan” in life.
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