September 30th

 Yesterday was a good day. Positive. Felt, pretty good health wise, and was, *gasp* kinda happy overall.

Which is a rare treat. And a positive sign that I must be getting better if my high water mark is shifting higher.

Today. Not so good. And in the late afternoon early evening, pretty rough. Felt ill. Nauseous. Weird shit going on internally on the left. A heart rate that was bouncing around. And for the first time in weeks, a shift of tingles across the left side of my face.

Suspiciously I kinda felt ill after hunching forwards for a while.

I had the same feeling of unwell way way back in March when my sister drove me back home. I hunched forward in the back seat to talk to them. And after half an hour felt absolutely sick. I put that down to "the ulcer malarkey".

Hmmm.

On retreating to bed and dozing I felt *really* fucking ill. Like. Oh. I'm dying ? I just lay there, waiting, not stressed, not alarmed, just a sense of... relief. I am writing this now however. So. I didn't die. It passed slowly, and moved into a mere... malaise. Slightly green. Shit's weird yo.

Today was a stressy work day. More fuck ups by previous devs. I am getting to the point of being anti dev. The amount of fuckups is just meh. It's not me being picky. It's things like - refactored code that has never once been tested and crashes out in live.

I've always eschewed the more namby pamby nanny development processes that modern IT has - wiping your ass with all sorts of automated tests that add time and overheads to a project but means you can employ slack ass coders .. to a certain degree. I've always maintained if you're doing a good job you don't need it and can save a lot of overhead. It seems to me that the modern developer is now incapable of that level of capability. They absolutely *need* those fucked up training wheels in order to pin them to some level of acceptable output. Otherwise it's a shit show. Coddled.

Meh.

Had a dream last night about quitting work. It echoed pretty much my conscious thoughts. Sick of doing everything. Sick of everything being a management mess. Sick of being taken advantage of. Need for rest. It was a pretty intense dream. Shouting was had. Hmm.

Also today I had another MRI scan. This one was taking a detailed look at my inner ear. To rule out that 1 in 100,000 problem. They don't know, but they are ticking the few boxes off that they do know about. It's doubtful anything will be revealed.

Have to say the NHS MRI was ... well... did it's job. But wasn't a patch on the Harley Street one. No music. No mirrored view to see into the room. Just shoved into a tube. Sweat it out. I must be getting used to scans of one sort or another, it didn't freak me out at all, despite probably being the worst MRI I've had. But I did ponder just how crap the NHS one was for simple things like offering earphones for music and for the techs to be able to talk to you over the machine. And the ability to see out into the room to defuse some of the claustrophobia. I think those machines are something like £250k a pop. You're telling me you can't run to the cost of some earphones and a mirror ? I wonder how many panicked resets they have to do because it doesn't put peoples fears at ease ? I would bet you within a year you'd probably earned your money back from installing those things against the panic rescans that you had to do. Seems like a false economy ( and more of a tortuous experience ) to go bare bones on those things.

There is, after all, a reason they give you a panic button when you go into those machines.

Everywhere I go I see obvious flaws and problems that could easily be fixed.

There's a saying that goes, those that don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. Very good. The cynical addition to that is. Those that DO know their history are doomed to stand helplessly by watching those that don't know their history repeat it. Ha ha. Which experience is worse ? And knowing shit doesn't make it better ! I find a lot of life is like that. The more you know. The more shit you see is wrong. You still can't often do shit about it. Because people. Whines. Sulks. Pouts. Egos. 

I have a weird relationship with People. On the one hand I think people are amazing and the most important thing there is and full of love for them. On the other hand I find people idiotic, immature, cruel, greedy, and all round assholes. Paradoxical. The duality of humanity.

New neighbours are super quiet. Don't think they've properly moved in yet. In an odd way I am missing my old neighbours. House next door feels dead. Their garden is barren and dreary. It doesn't add to my sense of happy joy. You realise what you had when you lose it kind of thing I suppose.

End on a positive.

Struggling with that today. I'm ok. But. Yeah. Nothing positive. Perhaps I had all my positive yesterday ? Sometimes I suspect I can bounce up into a bit of a manic state and then come back down again. Or is it brief interludes of happy where the clouds clear and I am "who I should be". Like a broken wire that gets a connection if you twist it into the right shape. Not sure which it is. Manic. Or flickering light.

Well. Let's focus on yesterday then.

In a better place yesterday, I have made future plans to go visit people and raid their house plant supplies. The kind people I know have offered a bunch of plants. So. That's good. It does cross my mind it's a bit like strategising with myself - planning future positivity bombs that are pre-arranged so that no matter if I am in a bad state, I am kinda forced to adhere to them ? The positive person in me making plans for the negative one. Heh. It's not that. But it amuses me to think that.

Oh. I read a *very cool* article today about theory of mind and yada blah. It went into some pretty deep dives into studies about how the brain works and blah. The interesting point the piece was revolving around was how people can differ with their own theory of mind, and *the better they are at it, they better they are at "mind reading" others*. If you are unsure of what theory of mind is about, a simple example is that of a child ( who when young haven't yet developed it ). If you hide a toy in a drawer in front of two kids, then ask one kid to leave, then move the toy. When you ask the remaining kid what they think the child that left will say when questioned where the toy is, the kid is *unable to put themselves into the mind of the other* and gives an answer based on their awareness. IE, the toy is in the box ( where it was moved to ). When they get a little older the answer changes to, they will say the toy is in the drawer ( but we know they are wrong ! ). It's basically abstract thinking but related to what you determine to be the capabilities of something other. IE IF you know someone has trouble walking, you can theorise when they are going to X place maybe they would like you to give them a lift. That's you. Thinking from their space.

Anywho. The whole how far your theory of mind has developed vs mind reading was a light bulb moment for me.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Wait.

You mean. All those long years spent intensely thinking about the universe, human condition, myself, how I tick, how others tick, how the "simulation works", endless observing people and their body language is a reason why I have uncanny empathic capabilities, and can track people in real time - and social chameleon to them. It also super explains why I can do everyone elses bloody job better than them - I can put myself in their job, think faster and do better. My simulations of them, and their job, are "pretty good". Better than their own grasp of shit.

It makes an *awful* lot of sense.

It *also* makes me wonder if that is also the root of a lot of my unhappiness, the whole, the more you know, the less happy you are, but here, is a goddamn scientific study hinting about the mechanisms, and add two and two together, and you can see how that might in extreme cases cause a lot of.. "dis-satisfaction".

Very interesting anyway.

It also made me think a lot about so called mediums and palm readers and all that jazz. I've personally always taken the view that the people in those roles are adept at reading others, whether they are conscious of it or not, and they are often great at social engineering ( as opposed to being aligned with the "mystic woo woo spirits"). This to me is not belittling their capabilities. Farrrrr from it. I think they are very smart people. But now I wonder if that's a mark of a highly trained theory of mind going on. 99% it has to be. It means this would very much be another way of measuring intelligence that you could finally test for. A certain kind of intelligence. It's also something I have dabbled with myself with Tarot cards and come to the conclusion that they are a pre scientific psychological therapy tool that in the right hands are extremely powerful.

All very interesting. To me. Heh.

How do you know they would do that ?

Oh. I have an obsessively developed theory of mind. No biggie.

Heheh.

The reason this is important is that it clearly defines what's going on. Not fuzzy. Not hand wavey. Ooh they have good common sense ( wtf does that mean ? ). It's a quantifiable demonstrable property. Which is very cool. Once you know something that you can identify it, measure it, repeat it. Then you can really start to leverage that knowledge. It's one thing to know that bangy thunder light makes a bush burn, and it turns the night into light. It's another thing to know how to create fire at will and eventually make, ooh, I don't know, a furnace to smelt metal. 

Another thing. When I'm this far out into thinking. I start to worry if I've just lost the plot and gone crazy. Or whether it's because I'm pretty far out there. Orbiting Jupiter. I can see how both would.. kinda feel the same. I don't over fret about it, because I always keep an open mind and just file and sort knowledge and see what competes the best ( very scientific ). But yeah. Maybe I'm just going crazy via conjectures. Or maybe I'm surfing those untravelled shores.

I mean. Technically. All theories, science et al, is just a form of craziness. The universe manifest and nazel gaving, trying to come up with rules about why its navel is that shape. Pretty nuts.