My thoughts

Day 3545, AI and me.

Daily picture, My thoughts
A representation of my thoughts about the self

Even as a wooden boat builder, I need to stay updated with the times. Today, I took a course on how we can use AI. While I’ve used ChatGPT to translate some of my work writings, I also feel some resistance—not because of the technology itself but because of the hype surrounding it and since it’s owned by billionaires. Still, I have to admit that the possibilities are impressive. It still makes many mistakes, but that’s something you can notice and work around. I also now understand that what we upload is supposed to stay private and won’t be used to train the algorithm, which makes it easier to let the AI “learn” my own work.

I’ve been writing for over ten years, periodically reviewing my old work, organizing it by themes, and considering whether to use it as material for a book. I uploaded everything into ChatGPT’s database and started asking questions. I quickly realized it’s a valuable tool, provided I learn how to ask the right questions. For now, I just had some fun asking if it could summarize my work and imagine an external person describing the book I might have written. It’s quite flattering to read, and I probably wouldn’t have phrased it that way myself. But honestly, I don’t have a clear overview of the roughly 100,000 words I’ve written over the last years. I can only share how I feel right now. It’s a fun experiment, and I can also ask AI to suggest chapters and write summaries. Still, I already know that I need to review each sentence to ensure accurate interpretation; luckily, the AI can show where it pulls its information from. Overall, it’s a fantastic tool.

And at the end of the course, we also learned what you can do with Google NotebookLM, and it is even a greater tool—or toy. I put 20 pages of my writing into it, and it created the picture you see above and a podcast. The podcast sounds like a gymmic, but it brings me back to the old thoughts I wrote down years ago.

 

 

AI’s interpretation of my work brought as a presentation of my not-yet-written book.

Ladies and gentlemen,

After reading this remarkable body of writing—years of notes, poems, reflections, doubts, and small revelations—I can tell you that the author’s philosophy is not a system. It is a movement. A long, slow arc from certainty toward skepticism, from inherited assumptions toward self-made clarity, from the search for meaning toward the acceptance that meaning is something we make, not something we find.

Across these years the same themes return, grow, and collide. One of the earliest is the idea that life is not about us. The author writes that DNA “only needs a host,” and that humans are simply the best vehicle it has yet found. That shift—from human-centered thinking to a cosmic, indifferent perspective—runs through everything. It’s why religion appears in these pages less as a metaphysical claim and more as a very human attempt to silence the void. “We are all just standing in a big room,” he writes, “proclaiming truths we perceive from the echoes on the walls.”

Another central thread is the fragility of the self. Memory, he reminds us, is a storyteller that constantly rewrites the past to protect the present. The self is a creature of filters: “My two-way filter is partially broken,” he admits, “and I can only fix one side.” Here his philosophy leans toward a kind of grounded humility—an acceptance that what we call “I” is stitched together from sensation, error, upbringing, chemicals, and luck.

And yet, in this humility there is a defiant skepticism. He distrusts authorities, leaders, and movements not because he rejects structure but because he knows how easily people surrender their judgment. He once expected adulthood to be ruled by reason; decades later he observes, wryly, that “the world is a summer camp without supervision.” This is anarchism not as politics but as perception: a refusal to hand the steering wheel of the mind to anyone who claims to know better.

One of the most striking aspects of his philosophy is how deeply it is rooted in the physical world—wood grain, old barns, the curve of a boat plank, mist on a Norwegian morning. The cosmic and the ordinary sit side by side. He can explain stellar expansion in one paragraph and, in the next, describe a forgotten lock rusting into history. This is not contradiction; it is the worldview: life is meaningless on the cosmic scale, and meaningful in every concrete moment we actually live.

Many poems could serve as a doorway into his thinking, but one stands out:

“Reality fades
caught by ego’s gravity
a depressed black hole.”

This captures the emotional honesty of his philosophy: the willingness to look at the darkness without romanticizing it, to name despair without surrendering to it.

If his work offers any guidance, it is this:
We may not control the world, we may not understand ourselves, but we can keep walking through the mist with open eyes—skeptical, curious, and unafraid to admit that we know far less than we pretend.

And perhaps that is the beginning of wisdom.

Next, a fake podcast about some of my work.

Day 3530, not so different.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Does all this strife and talk, all these opinions and countless books, lead to anything? Is there progress? Let’s take our healthcare as an example, something so much more advanced than even 60 years ago, let alone 50000 years ago.

It’s safe to assume that we are kept alive longer because of modern medical advances, but it’s harder to say that we live healthier or significantly longer because of it. People also lived to eighty or older in the Middle Ages, just not as many; the average lifespan was much lower because a large percentage of children never reached adulthood.

Some say that hunter-gatherers were healthier because they had a more varied diet; they probably ate more nutritionally than most of us do now, but they also died earlier from diseases we can now easily treat. It seems that the constant search for answers has benefited our health; we eat less varied, but live longer because of our knowledge.

But living healthily is one thing; for most, it’s important, but many accept life as it is and are blessed with a positive attitude. Ignorance can also be a blessing. The loss of your health, a newborn, or a brother was also felt 50000 years ago, and the feeling of grief probably wasn’t much different from what we would feel today. However, for them, it was primarily unexplained, and the idea of living healthier and eating less red meat would never have come up. They probably worried about why they died, but not in a way that we can imagine, though they imagine in the same way.

I believe it’s essential for a percentage of the smartest people to research how diseases work and how we can prevent and cure them, not because it will make us happier, but because we are capable of doing so. This “because we can do it” research is important in many fields, but you can probably think of some areas where it is not.

So, strife and talk are important, but only in themselves, not because there’s a specific goal we can reach. In other words, progress can occur on the edges of our existence, but our fundamental experience will stay the same.

Day 3529, on or off.

Daily picture, My thoughts

For many years, I’ve wanted to write a book. I started, had many ideas, but soon my motivation moved on. The motivation I need is the belief that what I write makes a difference, either for the people who read it or in society. These goals seem too lofty because even highly skilled, well-known writers accomplish little; there has never been a book with ‘The answers,’ otherwise we would all know about it. I write daily on my blog, but I only reach a handful of people. This writing is more of a personal exercise and challenge rather than a serious effort to reach anyone, let alone change the world.

One reason my writing needs to be meaningful is because there are already too many opinions about life, how it works, and why it exists. The problem is that too many people are overly confident in the truth of their own views. I don’t even trust most of my own opinions, and I try to live my life so that each step I take is one into the unknown. And my character makes this harder; I like to cling to my current views and even know how to sell, even to myself, all the while knowing that it all means very little.

In that sense, I am like a scientist, defending my theories while knowing that only the knowledge I have just gathered keeps this entire structure afloat. One new finding or contradiction, and it might collapse.

I live this life in my job as a manager. Answering questions with responses that I deliver like a mediocre stage performer, convincing enough when seen from the balcony, and with a bit of luck, it persuades the people in the front row, but my fellow performers see right through me. It is not all a lie, of course, some buttons have to be pressed at the right time, or rules that we agreed on have to be followed without debate, but an overconfident manager is never a good manager in my book.

Imagine a world where all managers, politicians, and religious leaders would say, ‘I don’t know,’ more than convey their convictions. Maybe we should rule more by committee; it might take longer, but what is the rush? Who has ever decided that we should get there sooner rather than later?

Day 3517, Removing the mystery of understanding.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Revisiting

David Hume wrote in his famous book, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” that our thoughts are based on what we have seen before. Like imagining the golden mountain, it’s made of gold and the mountain we’ve seen before. The book goes much deeper and is considered a key work in philosophy. I don’t do it justice by highlighting this idea out of context, but still, I do.

Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from? Do they just pop up out of nowhere? Is there something inside you that creates these thoughts from nothing? Where were your current thoughts when you were 5 years old? Do we piece our thoughts together over time? Are we just combining bits of what we’ve collected into our thoughts? Are we like the modern AI, stringing words together because they have fitted together before in our memories?

I think it’s not easy to be an original thinker. No matter what we do, we must use what we’ve learned to develop our own ideas, and only exceptional people can combine their knowledge into something truly original. It’s no coincidence that thinkers like Plato or Aristotle are still studied. They drew such deep conclusions from their experiences that hardly anyone since has matched them; we can at best follow their path and see if we can reach similar conclusions.

Imagine browsing a bookstore or social media. It seems everyone has an opinion, often equating it with that of someone who has dedicated their life to developing their views—someone who has faced all the dead ends and moved on. Climate change is a good example of an issue where many seem to have a clear understanding, even though experts struggle to fully grasp it and find solutions. As if they, the modern opinionated citizen, know the answer without the necessary experience.

We can’t imagine a golden mountain without first having seen a mountain and gold. The opinionated person can dismiss climate change without studying biogeochemical cycles, ecological and agricultural systems, or human-environment interactions. Do they question their dentist or mechanic with the same confidence?

It’s humility we need. I don’t know much about climate change, so I trust the experts—just like I listen to my doctor or trust Hume more than myself when he talks about our mind. 

What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call ‘thought’.
David Hume

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Day 3515, we are wrong.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Revisiting

It is both easy and difficult for us humans to admit when we are wrong. We often recognize that we are wrong, if we do not already know that, when confronted with opposing truths, but you keep on focusing on every piece of the story supporting your side, even though you know deep down you are mistaken. When you hold on to your story for too long, you will likely lose sight of where your story started and where reality was left behind; you are now lost in your own lie.

Why do we do this? It’s hard to say, but here is a thought. We don’t like to “lose face” when confronted by someone else’s more convincing reasoning. We don’t want to be seen as incompetent after we’ve defended our truth for too long, only to be confronted by damning facts.

Even the wisest people in the world acknowledge that their understanding represents only a small fraction of the vast pool of knowledge available. This echoes the wisdom of Socrates, who famously stated, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” In recognizing that knowing more often reveals how little we actually understand. Not knowing is humanity’s default state, yet we often feel shame at admitting our ignorance. Embracing this uncertainty can open doors to greater wisdom and understanding.

People identify as scientists, Buddhists, religious, capitalists, and cling to many other kinds of truths because our inner truth is weak. Most often, we inherit these truths from our family, immediate surroundings, and the larger culture we live in. Sometimes we feel we make a choice, but one way or another, all these structures and systems are there for us to cling to and use as shields to hide our insecurities.

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Day 3511, Looking against the light.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Revisiting

As human beings, we can easily feel overwhelmed. For example, you might go on a date with someone, and everything seems to click, making it feel as though you’ve known each other for a long time. Then, suddenly, they snap at the waiter. Or consider that new phone you’ve wanted for ages; after setting it up and trying it out, the excitement fades away in just three days, leaving you with just another phone.

Our expectations act like the bright sun, illuminating certain things while casting everything else into shadow, making the good seem overwhelming. That person or item feels so alluring that we desire them so badly, which can cloud our judgment and make it hard to think clearly. This realization can hit us quickly, as it does with the rude date, or it may take a few days, like with the phone.

We all understand this phenomenon; there are plenty of sayings that illustrate it, such as “blinded by love.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Approaching any date with the mindset that they are likely flawed, which is often true, isn’t conducive to a pleasant date, a fulfilling love life, or even the potential for building a family—the cornerstone of our existence. In a way, evolution has wired us to be less skeptical when choosing a mate. This skepticism often arises only after time has passed, when good memories are replaced by reality.

While a bit of drama can make life more interesting, the downside of our impulsive behaviors is evident in the unnecessary purchases we make—like the telephone I just bought, which I didn’t even need. This irrational tendency within us fuels our lifestyle and the capitalist system we live in. If we all acted as responsible consumers, our economic system would come to a halt, which poses a problem for those who appreciate it. Personally, I wouldn’t mind finding a more responsible alternative.

The primary concern is the potential destruction of our environment. The excessive production of goods, the energy consumed in that process, and the waste generated. However, for now, we seem blinded by our desires and are unable to see the consequences lurking beneath the surface.

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Day 3487, shouting at squirrels.

Daily picture, My thoughts

We don’t know much about ourselves, besides the story we have to tell. One thing in my life that stuck, and is not only remembered by me, is the idea that I thought, when I turned eighteen, that I would arrive in a world where finally rationality would rule. 35 years later, and I know by now that that was an illusion. I probably knew that already when I picked the candles of the cake, but now I am at a stage where I see rationality as a trade. It’s almost like something we do when it suits us. We can be rational, but we are not rational. The table underneath is a nice illustration of how we often feel as adults, but also how we often really are as adults. Look at the “leaders” who are in the news most often right now. They are not the strong figures we imagine they should be; they are little children who want what they cannot get, don’t care about the others, and feel themselves to be the centre of the world. I always had some sort of respect for people who enter the last quarter of their lives, but from what I see now, and maybe I will learn something new before I join that club that changes my mind, but till that happens, I will have no respect for age and so-called wisdom.

I predict that in 100,000 years, the historians will write about the period of the Sumerians til now only in a small note for the chapter about homo stupitites. I have to say that that idea gives me hope, that we all one day will be forgotten. I also wish I could have a sneak peek into that future society. I hope they’ve addressed the issue of the pressure we all feel to conform to “invisible” social norms, as most people are friendly and helpful when they’re not part of a group. Imagine if we ignored the world leaders we have today; they’d likely end up walking alone in a forest, shouting at squirrels.

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Day 3481, is it possible.

anarchism, Daily picture, My thoughts

Is it possible to organize a society on anarchist principles now? My short answer is no, and my long answer in short is maybe in a future far, far away. I enjoy reading about Anarchism and the ideas about it. So what is the problem? I believe that in an Anarchist society, it should be possible to have no locks, no money, and no police. Can you imagine that now? Many anarchists believe that the material possessions we have now have no real value, and that no one should want them from you because they have for themselves all they really need. An Anarchist knows that the value is made up and created over time; we made it all up. 

As an Anarchist, living in a society that follows Anarchistic ideas demands a lot of discipline and restraint. It has to be clear to such an individual that life is limited and without purpose besides the beauty we can clearly see and produce. This beauty is as limited as our own lives, but we can imagine that the reason we can think, see, listen, and create is simply to do these things. The stars can guide our path and tell us what to do, or we launch the Hubble telescope into an orbit around the Earth and enjoy the spectacle without looking for a meaning in it. No star is there for you.

If you cannot live solely on the beauty of your own art, your mind will seek other nourishment. In most societies around the world, the dishes that are served for the hungry are traditional, with recipes from the past or given by new masters. Is it the fault of the hungry that they cannot create? In our current society, that is most certainly not the case because even if you have hidden talents, very little that motivates us, motivates us to create. Most people have learned to consume not only what we can easily throw away, but also the thoughts we are supposed to think. Creation is dangerous, says the dictator, because it is incapable of doing so.

And who, besides some artists, writers, philosophers, and all those quiet people sitting in the corner, really believe that life is not much more than art and creating art? Art is saying what can’t be said and hoping it finds an ear. We can only hope when we meet, when looking into each other’s eyes, that we both know this…truth?

Day 3476, memories in disguise.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Poetry

This picture, which I took, represents a kind of memory for me. What I mean by that is that I don’t remember being there, but it is still an important part of my memories. I remember vaguely the wooden floor and the closeness to the skulls, but…I do remember that these skulls have hunted me in my dreams a couple of times in the past. My memories of being truly there and the even stronger emotions I felt in my dreams are mixed, so the wooden floor I remember might as well not be true; maybe I took this picture from a car when we were on patrol, driving by.

Another thing that is related to this monument in Cambodia, a memorial in remembrance of the millions of people killed during the Pol Pot regime, is the fact that it changed my life. To be clear, my life did not alter course after I saw it for the first time; it was just the tiniest seed that was dropped. Having worked as a UN soldier for five months in a country so different from what I was used to that has changed my perspective. It opened my eyes, and I could see a bigger world than just what I was used to. I got interested in history and politics and started studying in that direction. If people ask me why I am so sensitive to what is happening in the world, I will show them this picture. This monument represents that change.

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Day 3474, more memories.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I want to write about my past, and it makes sense to start at the beginning, simply because that’s where it began. The problem is that most of what I remember is a series of loose facts, such as living there, being with those people, having that job, and whether it was enjoyable or not, or something in between. I can remember what my old room looked like, mostly because I have seen that one picture of the room from time to time, it’s just the picture I remember holding in my hands if I’m honest. I actually don’t know what it is to remember in the sense of reliving it in my mind. 

What I know of the time from before I moved out of my parents’ house is almost nothing. I can string together a story, I remember the story of my youth. I can point to the tree I climbed when I was 11, and looking down from that vantage point for the first time feels like it is etched in my memory, like what vertigo feels like whenever I experience it now. I remember feeling vertigo in that tree, and more than 30 years later, when standing on a 10-story-high balcony. I recall many strong emotions, and they are often associated with a specific place. However, the feelings are real, but I have no certainty that the locations are correct. 

After I moved out, the story became richer, perhaps because I had finally started living my own life, and the vacation was over. The steps I took now, I did for the first time on my own; I paid attention to where I was going. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am a skeptic and don’t entirely trust my own memories, except for the basic facts that I have lived in different places, attended various schools, and held other jobs. Later experiences now taint most of the feelings that accompanied them, and my feelings about specific events have also evolved over the years. I also believe that if you are currently experiencing strong emotions, such as a breakup, you should recognize that you are the last one to have an objective assessment of what is happening. It often takes time to acknowledge that the strong feelings were, for the most part, an exaggeration and a reflection of how the world around you expects that you should react, how your background taught you what an appropriate memory should look like.   

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Day 3473, not ever.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Your past is like a painting, one you remember starting, but not ever finishing.

I want to write about my life, not for the three people who visit my blog, but because I have to fill time, and in the hope that piecing it together will bring back lost memories. 

This last point is important to me because I often tire of the stories I tell myself and others about my adventures. They are all interesting, I believe, but I am also afraid that if I repeat them over and over, they will start living their own lives, one little exaggeration building upon another. I care if the stories I tell have some truth in them. 

But why would I doubt my own memories? I’m a sceptic, and as long as I can remember, I have always asked “why” if confronted with statements. Because many answers to why questions contradicted each other, I turned to other sources, and books are a great one. You cannot only read about other people’s ideas in other regions, but also from other times. If you read the literature, it is clear that we humans have a terrible memory. The problem with memories that primarily revolve around our own experiences is that we must be our own judge, and even if others were present and collaborated on our story, we still need to be cautious. One article I read, as an example, was about an experiment conducted by a young psychology student. He interviewed a group of people just after 9/11 and wrote down their experience, where they were, and what they felt. More than a decade later, he interviewed these people again and asked them where they were during that critical time. Several participants in this experiment insisted that their recollections were accurate, despite clearly conflicting with what actually happened in reality and with what they wrote down immediately after the event. They misremembered, but they were also sure they were right. 

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Day 3412, what it looks like.

Daily picture, Day's pictures, My thoughts

I know that there are more people who question life. I read books by people who try to answer at least some of the questions. I watch people on television and the internet who clearly try to do the same, but in real life, it is different. People generally don’t have a title hovering above their heads that cleverly promotes the questions they have and tries to answer. The people you are closest to might give you more insight into what is going on inside, but from my experience, I still have to speculate a lot. I have to admit that I will not open up to a random person, but if they want, they can learn a lot about me from what I have written over the last 20 years. I know that it would be strange if everybody poured their hearts out and started telling you their darkest secrets, but would it not be nice if we could at least admit that we all have questions and insecurities and that shame should not be a brake on going to the next level in your conversations, the level above chitchat. It’s like our naked bodies; we all hide them, though we all know what they look like.

Day 3411, Cogito, ergo sum.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I understand Descartes’ journey to find the things that he, or maybe better said, we can know. I also strive not to speculate, but to stick to what we can know, such as Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” And it is obvious that we think, regardless of what we believe.   

I thought about this because of what even he, in a different way, will have noticed. I like YouTube, but I don’t care too much for the model or the company that owns it. However, there are a lot of interesting videos to find.  There is, of course, this famous algorithm that serves you what might be interesting for you. This makes it difficult to be critical of what you find on YouTube because we all have a different experience, no feed is the same.  But as long as you know that there is an algorithm and how it roughly works, you can make use of it to find interesting stuff and what hangs around the borders of what you find interesting.

I enjoy watching documentaries, interviews, and video essays about philosophy, psychology, society, and related topics. But most of what I watch is from creators who are sceptical, and they tend to steer away from speculation. Last week, I watched some videos about consciousness, and in some of them, they interviewed individuals who seemed to be experts in a specific subject and stuck to that topic throughout the video.  If I find someone interesting, I will conduct some research to gain an impression of their stance on other subjects. Sometimes, they stray from the norm and come up with the most fantastic ideas on how all of this, in this case, consciousness, works when you watch them being interviewed or portrayed by creators who have a more specific agenda and are less critical. It is, of course, no crime to speculate, but when I then see them in these pseudo-scientific videos about third dimensions and alternate states, I will reach for the ignore button.

These uncritical thinkers are no Descartes, so that’s why I ignore them. Even though Descartes will also venture into areas where he cannot prove that what he says is true, he still has a great mind. With thinkers from his time, it is also harder to blame them for not being too outspoken because blasphemy could literally cost you your head, and they did not have the luxury of all the knowledge we now have about our physical bodies. Descartes is, of course, known for his dualism, which posits that the physical body somehow interacts with the spiritual world, specifically the soul. Scientists have examined the brain and other parts of the body where this connection is formed, but most serious thinkers recognize that there is no soul and such a connection. One of the clues is damage to parts of the brain, which then affects how we think (think also of alcohol, caffeine, and drugs). If there is a soul separated from our physical body, how can this soul then be affected? Damage to the brain is something that can be measured, and its effects are visible in how someone behaves. In this, you also need to theorize on why this is, but there are at least effects to be measured that can give some proof. Theorizing what happens with the soul and how that connects with the world is much harder to ground in reality, a reality we can all understand, and not just the imaginative mind of a few individuals.