When I was younger, I was a determinist. Some would call that a fatalist: I believed that whatever happened was what was going to happen anyway. It was all equally fate. We experienced ourselves making choices from an insider's perspective, but that didn't mean they didn't happen step by step according to causality and the laws of physics.

The reason I'm not a fatalist is that there's nothing to lose. If I'm predetermined from birth to death, then I can't help it anyway: so if I believe in free will and that somehow harms me, I could not have done otherwise; those were always the fixed rules of my game.

If I'm not predetermined completely, then in some sense I stand to lose anything I could possibly lose by getting this wrong and thinking "I have no choice." I stand to lose anything and everything choice might offer, including my life itself.

A lot depends on what we actually mean by "I," but that's a rabbit hole I don't want to get lost in right now. My organism can have a choice the same way an NPC can have a choice based on how you're playing. "Having a choice" doesn't mean "non-deterministic," necessarily. Your FitBit could "have a choice" to wake you up with an alarm that depends on your current biometrics - that is, on whether it calculates this to be a good time or not. By human standards, that isn't a choice, because it's deterministic. But from some definitions of the FitBit's "I" (if there is one), that's a choice anyway. It can't know your biometrics in advance, so it's waiting for your input, which when it arrives will inform its action. The process of that informing and that action could in theory "feel like something," even if it can only flow one way that time. The FitBit is in some sense "surprised" by your biometric data, as it didn't know it in advance: that's the definition of information, and of surprise, which are now often defined as the same thing.

I find the idea of all this experience - some really painful - very wasteful if we don't actually, in that experiencing, gain the power to co-invent the course of nature.

If I have nothing but determinism in me, what do I gain for my pain?

Learning, awareness - but I could learn from data without experiencing that. So why experience it?

I'm convinced we feel something because we are participating in the creation of the universe.

Creation, not just unfolding.

When I write, I'll start out with some basic sense of direction. As soon as I get to a point where I'm not sure how to proceed, and I know this is experimental - or else I see something I want to fix, but I'm not entirely sure the new version keeps everything that did work - I highlight it all, copy, create a bunch of lines above it, and paste. Then I continue.

Sometimes I never do this. Things I post on Facebook often are not thought out much and I just put up what I wrote (and then second guess it all, and probably alter a bunch of little things, and quite likely delete the post).

Other times I do this over and over and over and over. There are poems I've written with hundreds of copies like this stacked up in a file, with random numbers of blank lines between them.

So far I have left no extra copies of this thing, though I've altered the paragraphing above.

There is a point. I'm not just pseudo-bragging about method, and it isn't just about bragplaining, either. This method I described is actually in some ways very frustrating. I started it - I'm not sure when - but it's now basically an unbreakable habit, no matter how imperfect I find it. For example, I dislike that I use a random number of lines between versions. Shouldn't I use a specific symbol to mark the transitions, and a fixed number of blank lines? I've tried. Many different variations of that. Nothing sticks. It's all too much effort. When I do this, I'm being completely impulsive. That's how I write - impulsively. Then I worry a million different ways. And I'm proud of some of it, and then embarrassed that I'm proud of something that isn't after all very good or appealing. That's kind of humiliating, to realize your best is dreck. But you have to. Or you can. I choose to.

The point is for years I've been trying to figure out a better method, and specifically a piece of software that would support it. Yes, I could use Track Changes in some app. Other apps have Snapshots. There are version control systems used by programmers but also appreciated by some writers and other content creators.

I wish any of that felt right to me.

I want to be able to survey the history without friction, all the versions. And I can. But I also want to be able to clear away that clutter instantly or navigate versions in a less linear, more functional sense. That is, when I edit a poem, and I'm copy-paste-editing new versions vertically in a stack, at any given time, I'm working on a particular part of the poem. Something bothers me, or some idea is tugging at me from out there and I'm trying to bring it down to earth and human letters. So a string of versions will be about that part. But then later - who knows where in the file, or when - I may be working on that same part again. There are poems I've edited here and there for 2 decades, some even a little bit more (though not as much, as my first poems didn't use this copy-paste-edit approach in a vertical stack - for those I usually have one or at most two versions). If I want to work on another version years later informed by all the previous versions, it becomes very difficult to survey the different options I've considered for any given part of the poem. Sometimes I'll put a chain of 4, 5, 10, 20 different words or phrases that are options for that part of the poem, all in the same version in the stack. Then the next version, I'll have a bunch more. Or a bunch of options for the next line, or the previous one.

At this point I don't write poems like that anymore, or not most of the time. I've gotten lazy, and more experienced, and much of what I consider I'm happy to leave unwritten, and just pick what I prefer right now, and leave it to time or whatever to see if I want to change it again.

But that belies the fact I do not have any one particular method, and each poem - each thing of any kind I write - can use a slightly different or a very different approach. I do still write strings of alternative words, sometimes. And years ago, I'd often use fancy parentheses and brackets and something like regexes to indicate different options and branches and whatever. That is, if I use this word, I should use this whole phrase, or maybe this whole phrase plus this other word, but if I use that word, then - you get the idea. You can sort of indicate that kind of thing with backslashes, parentheses, asterisks, brackets, perhaps symbols for AND (I generally didn't go that far), etc.

The reason I did that is because editing language is fundamentally not linear. Options are connected to other options in sporadic, unpredictable, long-distance, unobvious, intuitive ways. So I was grappling with that as I considered different options.

My point is I'd like a text editor that works with how minds actually work, or, anyway, more like how I work when I write. And I think the friction is that our minds do not work particularly well in terms of flat files, trees, snaphots, and linear histories. We're very webbed internally.

I keep trying to design that text editor, at least in my mind. A few times I've tried to write out my requirements.

I want to be able to navigate the alternatives for any piece of writing that has an edit history, and in a way that makes a lot of sense, and unfurls as you poke around - but that also makes available the sequence of complete versions (snapshots) in their original order. And I don't want to feel that my writing is trapped in the particular app that does this, and liable all to be destroyed by some bug in it.

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A group has recently been experimenting with poems that kind of play themselves. You watch the poem type itself out the way the poet originally worked through it all. This is pretty amazing to watch, and at first I thought they'd gone and done what I wanted. But it still isn't, quite. Their system gives you a scrub bar to pace through the movie of the poem as it's written. But that isn't yet a context-aware, branching navigation system as I imagine.

There are two impetuses. One is to improve the editing experience, and maybe improve the final works that way. The other is to present another kind of poem, in which composition or reading sequence becomes part of the expression. I like the idea that a poem could be (quite literally) different words to different people.

What this suggests is that a better tool for editing would also be a tool for presenting interactive poems. That is, you *could* reveal your editing history as a navigable, branchy webwork. *Or* you could use those same tools to compose a webwork that is all intended fully as the poem. In that scenario, every alternative would get equal weight, and readers could choose their way through according to their personal affinities. One easy option could even be to ask them, through their navigation choices, to write out a complete, set version of the poem. In that sense, the reader would become the editor at the same time, and the final version would be their miniature publication, shared, of course, and primarily, with the original author. That's a way to relate to someone that most of the time most of use do not use or even really have access to, though technically now we do.

Coding has a way of making people feel stupid, and that's absolutely true for me. And I think it's related to the challenge of logic in general, but not the same.

We have this ingrained sense that we should begin at the beginning and read through text.

Unless you have a very strange mind or an incredible amount of experience and some very particular goal, this is absolutely not what to do with code.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried and failed to find an entry point in my own code so that I could get back into understanding it and making progress with it. And I can't tell you how stupid and incompetent and hopeless this makes me feel.

So - I want to tell you a secret: It isn't about being smart.

When I went from writing that code to feeling how I just described, I did not actually get dumber, or forget how to do this.

And I've gotten lots of good information - which really helped me - about this stuff from people who seem decidedly average in terms of intelligence (an opinion, of course, and I don't mean that in any sort of judgy way - people have so many kinds of value).

There are several tricks that I can't fit in one post. Maybe 3 essential ones. But the biggest on the topic of feeling stupid - not even understanding your own code, for example, or anyone else's, and feeling completely stuck - comes from the fact that we want to read code the way we read an article. That isn't right.

The way to "read" code is to change something and hit Run.

That sounds too simple. It probably isn't quite believable.

If you want, I can link you to an article that helped. It goes into much more detail. But maybe you'll believe me when I say that this is second-nature to the best hackers. Your first teacher - or ten teachers - probably won't tell you. It's something most people who know don't really think to say. But it's common knowledge once you get to a certain level.

I'm not sure why coding is so fundamentally interactive. But it is. It isn't a lecture, it's a dialogue. The other side of the dialogue would be messages from the compiler (when things don't work) and the behavior of the app (when they work well enough that you can play with the result).

(Also, when you don't know how to solve a specific error, you've got other people, search engines, and every question other people have posted online. That's an additional wing of dialogue, if you need it. It isn't what I'm focusing on right now, because you yourself can do more than you think. But don't forget that coding languages are actually designed for people, not computers, and there are many other of these people creatures, and professionals rely on these resources also. Most API specs and manuals are online, and you get to them with a search: that too is consulting other people. So one way or another, asking others is generally necessary, even if you're like me and you like to figure stuff out and don't like to ask for help.)

You get a sense for where things are, what they do, etc, etc, etc by changing and running the code. That creates your mental map of the system. For some reason (which I don't understand either), this is the natural way to get in tune with the architecture of the logic. If people don't tell you, it's because they've forgotten they ever didn't know, or it's just their basic personality to tinker and learn that way. That's "reading." It's how to start. And it's how to get unstuck.

Believe me, you can stare at code for hours, days... even for months on and off... even a year or more. I've done it. Many times. Painfully.

Change something. Hit Run.

It's so passé to bash poetry that doesn't rhyme, or painting that doesn't represent something concrete. Some people love both. Why would that offend? (Or, more to the point, why wouldn't people deeply offended by that be the right ones to offend with art?)

Also, if you think a poem doesn't rhyme just because the line endings don't rhyme, let me let you in on a secret. (Now you know.)

Basically every poem has rich sound and image interlinks, or it wouldn't be a poem.

You might find two concepts juxtaposed random, but if someone else sees a lot in that pairing, who's the one lacking?

If everyone finds a thing perfectly random, it's called noise, and no one pays any attention. Generally noise is not offensive, especially when you can opt in or out.

Splatter on a canvas seems about as inoffensive as possible. Don't like it? Keep walking.

OK: you might feel someone else's work should feature here instead. You might feel cheated of an entrance fee. You might rail against the privilege of an established painter who turns in a canvas of solid beige that finds its way to a major gallery wall.

But we have to admit, those are all meanings prompted by the blank in the gallery.

It's understood now that works derive some, much, or all of their meaning from context and interpretation. These works that rile some people up are playing with those people most.

A blank beige canvas in a gallery of great works means something different from what it would mean on a coffee shop wall, or next to a dumpster. The air of legitimacy lent by an artist's name and reputation mixes in with that. It's part of the trick.

And sometimes it's nice to look at a blank space, or relax from trying to process a swarm of intense images, and just doodle mentally with some unconnected dots.

You're welcome. The museum was thinking of you.

Silence is neither consent nor dissent. We say it sends a message, but actually it maintains a vacuum. Silence is the negative space that draws our attention elsewhere - perhaps to what's around it, carefully arranged, as in an artwork - or perhaps anywhere else that seems more exciting or urgent or productive - which is the usual case in real life.

One way to handle the idea of death is to realize we all share in it. However afraid or horrified you might be, you are quite the opposite of alone. Every single person who has ever lived has this same threshold to cross. Almost every single person fears it. There is even something quite disgusting and rather humiliating about it. You lose all control over your body and begin to stink and gross people out and terrify them and sadden them, and they have to clean this up and put you in the ground. If a fart is embarrassing, it seems to me that dying is rather more so.

Another, similar way to handle the idea of death is to recognize that, in some sense, we are supposed to die. I'm not sure that I resonate much with the claim that "death is a part of life." Maybe it's just the wording. It seems to me that death is where life stops, and beyond: not per se a part of it. To call that "part" is a bit like calling the solar system and beyond "part of the sun." I'm not exactly sure I buy it. Anyway, I somehow relate better to the idea that we're meant to die. When your time comes, you aren't doing anything wrong. There was no escaping it. You did for so long, but now that is not how the universe is arranged. Now it is arranged so that you go to a state, or states, of death, whatever that, or those, might be.

When I was very little, I'm not sure where I got the idea, and why it was a preoccupation, but I was very interested in this thought that other worlds exist. I remember the day I realized that "world" had an ambiguous meaning. What is the world? The world, most would say, is this planet. Earth. And so yes, there must be other worlds, because there are other planets. But what about other worlds entirely, other universes? I believed those existed also. I was very young. This was 2-4, somewhere in there. I remember I was in bed for that "Earth is the world" realization, and it must have been the answer to a question I'd asked, and I don't know which parent had given the answer. But this bed was not the bed I had when I was 4-6. It was either when we lived in Paris, which would be up to when I was 3.5, or when we lived in various places on the East Coast, until I was about 4, and then I had that other bed in that new place in Florida, where we actually stayed a while (and my parents still have that place, and are in fact there right now). The "other worlds" idea was just a minor preoccupation until I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis. This turned my world upside down, in the sense that it seemed to be all about this feeling I had that other worlds must exist.

It's been a thread my entire life. Most people, I know - and I somehow knew in the "Earth is the world" moment, possibly because my mother or father said something to this effect - find much else to think about, and spend little if any time wondering about other worlds, which we can't reach. If we can't reach them, what does it matter if they exist? This is probably, on reflection, what my mother said. That's her style. And I think I remember the "planet Earth" aspect because it was new. Her side of the story, if you will, was different from how I was thinking. I wasn't thinking of "the world" as a particular planet, and "other worlds" as other planets. Nor was I thinking of any of this as in any way uninteresting. But she was slightly dismissive of "other worlds" and saw the whole thing in the very practical light of one planet or another.

It's funny how I can recover that it must have been her from the feeling, and from that, why I remembered the moment. The feeling was that her take was different from the one I knew, and that I knew my dad would respond to differently, and with more excitement. At first that was discomfort - a different take is always, if it's a good one, a bit uncomfortable. Surprise that upends how you're seeing is always a bit discomfiting. Even when you tend to enjoy that, there's a jolt, almost like an electric shock. Most people don't enjoy electric shocks. And the jolt doesn't have to be very fast, like a static shock as you touch your lips to the stream from a water fountain (true story, and quite strange) in winter, inside, at work.

Competitive fairness says that if I must suffer a wrong, we should all suffer that same wrong as a fair handicap. Cooperative fairness says that if I don't like what happens to me, I will try to stop it from happening to anybody. As you can see, two formulations of fairness lead to directly opposite actions.

(I put this on Facebook 10 years ago today and wouldn't change a word!)