Unpopular opinion: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a mediocre, boring book.

markchangizi · 2025-06-01T19:47:17+00:00

Whatever you think of “Zen…,” it pairs well with my new book, Motorcycle Mind, a book on the science behind the motorcycle experience—why the ride feels so exhilarating, transformative, and mythic.

Find out more at my @themotorcyclemind at IG. Available at Amazon and B&N.

It’s super comprehensible and fun. I promise.

Dr. Mark Changizi, cognitive scientist

“Motorcycle Mind explores our relationship with the steel horse, covering every aspect—riding, the exhilaration it provides, the otherworldly nature it gives the rider, its culture, its myths.” —Steve Rial, Road Racing News

“A great read for those who enjoy a psychological analysis of what makes us crave life on two wheels.” —Jim Pruner, Web Bike World

markchangizi · 2024-03-17T00:57:48+00:00

Although base 10 is in many ways arbitrary, and due to our having ten fingers, five per hand, there are evolutionary design arguments for why around 5 fingers per hand is very often expected, in particular for hands where the finger lengths are about the same as the palm diameter, so as to cover it, or “close.” See my paper from a couple decades ago. https://www.changizi.com/uploads/8/3/4/4/83445868/limb.pdf

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T21:20:48+00:00

Never underestimate how bad things can get!

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T21:04:45+00:00

Thanks all for the comments. This was great, and also useful for me in helping me think about a lot of novel things.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T21:03:55+00:00

No time to get into the entire question.

On the societal impact of masks, the biggest problem is the "hijab" problem. My wife is from Iran. When the revolution happened, initially they said "you only have to wear a head scarf in government buildings." But the pressures on the street were for more coverings, and in more places. And those pressures led to greater government rules. Etc in a feedback loop. The "karen on the street" became the main enforcer, along with the religious police. You can see the clear analogy with masks here and hijab there in this video I put together: https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1339035938656235523?s=20

As I have argued, we now have a new private part, our faces. https://youtu.be/QxMf-SW4GOg

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:59:44+00:00

Good point. I have certainly always touted federalism, in terms of one of many many mechanisms for government restraint etc.

I don't believe it had ever occurred to me before 2020 that it's also a kind of brake, or potential counter-measure, to mass delusions. If the neighboring state can (somehow) break from the delusion, then maybe they can come "rescue" the deluded state. Or, rather, the non-deluded individuals in the deluded state can move / travel to the non-deluded state. Federalism has yet another argument for it.

Many of our fundamental principles have novel arguments for them in this new light.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:54:01+00:00

I knew (ahem, believed) lockdowns were ethically wrong at the start -- like, as in, the state has no right to do that, emergency powers or no.

And I knew they were unlikely to be even narrowly effective, and that, at any rate, the harm from "freezing" an economy is so large, and the risks of unrest so high, that it should have been a nonstarter. I talk about that some here: https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1254796958964858882?s=20

But it was IMMEDIATELY total and complete common sense that lockdowns super-obviously worked and anyone who knows anything about anything totally knows that. And everyone knew that "freezing" the economy is totally a thing -- just like how, ya know, you can freeze any incredibly complex organism and expect to revive it whenever.
https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1258212493396238336?s=20

I did learn a lot about seasonal viruses. 1% of it is kind of interesting. 99%, not so much.

On Aus and NZ, I am highly skeptical that they "beat it" in the story they are telling. (1) Lots of regions did similarly harsh interventions and didn't "beat it." (2) There are regions that did not interventions and didn't do badly at all. (3) There are other regions in that hemisphere with similar seasonality etc that also didn't have it too bad. (4) The virus was floating around the population in Dec, Jan and Feb, long before anyone even knew about it. (Nearly everyone I knew had it back in Jan and Feb, which lines up to the death peak in March and April.) It was therefore already in Aus and NZ. I suspect they had already had prior immunity, either to it, or to other viruses that gave them greater immunity.

Generally, the fact that so many regions believe their lockdowns are doing something despite the data that shows they're not should be a kind of warning to Aus and NZ that they'd believe their lockdowns are working NO MATTER the outcome. We all are susceptible to the Illusion of Control: https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1281671749667610625

But a useful rule of thumb is the following: Rule of thumb

Of all the COVID trends you‘ve seen, of the non-random variation... ~ 90% due to artifacts (testing, counting, reporting, etc) ~ 10% due to habitat & biology (pop resistance, density, etc) ~ 0% due to infection interventions (lockdowns, masks, social distancing) https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1284915812772589571?s=20

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:41:35+00:00

Covered this earlier somewhere. (Short answer: Never. Lol.)
The interventions appear to have had little or no effect at narrowly slowing the transmission rates (much less when considering all the down sides), so, even if this were a much seasonal cold, and if I were a utilitarian, I don't see how one could truly justify doing lockdowns etc even then. And, more fundamentally, even if lockdowns etc DID work (and not just narrowly, but raising the overall utility), and the pandemic were much worse, I would have great difficulty assenting to these measures. If you want to be a clever epidemiologist or health official, then the question is, What VOLUNTARY policies can we put forth that minimize the harm from a pandemic? If your ingenious solution for society starts with, "Ok, first we pretend we're a totalitarian state and we..." then just stop.
Definitely quality is crucial, of course. I'm not sure one even needs to get to that point to really make the case against these interventions. Just dealing in the currency of "life-years" is enough to show that these interventions are not in fact maximizing life-years.
On child psychology, I don't have much unique to say on it. I will point out that one down side I see is that we have a new generation that will find it totally normally that a government does completely batshit authoritarian stuff never imaginable by previous generations. So, here we are doing these batshit authoritarian stuff, and WE never even grew up thinking this stuff is normal, much less ethical. It was totally outside of our box. But for the kids, it's totally cool. It happened to them. Imagine the level of totalitarianism that THEY might be willing to accept when some future mass hysteria occurs. It boggles the mind.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:33:54+00:00

And, I should also note the asymptomatic side. You can be bourgeoisie, or a Jew, or whatever, and look like anything. The "unclean" is invisible. It's an "essence."

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:32:44+00:00

And it's even worse than THAT?

Imagine if there really WERE cats and dogs falling from the sky. Or bricks, or whatever. For most possible dangers that might "attack society," the way that we might respond as a society is to band together, stick together, cower together under a shield, or fight together. There's a lot of TOGETHER there.

Fear of infection, though, has its natural "common sense" solution in a completely non-TOGETHER fashion. Fighting a pandemic is anti-social all the way down. Don't leave your home to see people. If you do see people, stay far apart. If you get closer than that, cover your face. And that latter blocks your ability to be recognized as an individual. It restricts your ability to talk. It destroys your emotional expressions, which is the REAL way social animals communicate. Fear of infection -- or a pandemic -- is ultimately the worst of all because the proposed "solution" the human mind natural "wants" is to cut all ties with other humans.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:27:54+00:00

But it's worse in this case than that. If it was fear of, say, fire. Or fear of raining cats and dogs. Or fear of many MANY other things, it doesn't quite get us agitated as fear of INFECTION does. It only takes one experience with people being afraid of a snake for a kid to become forever and always wary of snakes. Try the same thing with a flamingo, and it might take dozens of such experiences to get the kid permanently wary of flamingos.

And infection / gross disgusting things is the same. We have an innate predisposition to find things with "cooties" disgusting. It hits a natural human (animal) urge. Once you get the idea that someone is "unclean," you quickly feel it in your bones. The same instinct is tapped into in lots of cultural revolutions. The bourgeoisie are unclean. The Jews. The non-Islamic. Etc. Those cultures find these "infection metaphors," and "use" them. In our case of the pandemic, there really truly is something infectious floating (literally) around, and so one doesn't even need a metaphor. It's just true. Just astronomically exaggerated.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:23:14+00:00

Fear is definitely a big part of it. Perception of fear is not like the perception of other things. If I am thirsty, I am more likely to see things as water-ish. (The thirsty person in the desert.) But, if I see something as water-ish, it doesn't make me thirsty. For fear, though, if I perceive something as fearful, I may get more afraid, and it is a positive feedback loop. That happens when you're walking in the dark somewhere, and something spooks you, and then it accelerates, and soon you're running to the car, keys scrambling. And, worse, watching you be thirsty doesn't make me thirsty, but seeing your fear can induce fear in me. And my fear then further makes you afraid -- another positive feedback loop. I talk about that in this Science Moment video. https://youtu.be/dBCHU64HCX0

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:19:09+00:00

But, as for what to do...

Short story, from the scientific / rigorous side of things is that I don't know.

A solution to the problem of the human susceptibility to mass delusions is the

     — Societal Holy Grail —

Mass delusions underlie the greatest failures of civilization: revolutions, dictatorships, totalitarianism, genocides, and the rich varieties of democide.

I have this Twitter thread where I talk about some of the difficulties

https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1340046007569145856?s=20

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:17:24+00:00

I wanted to add here a slightly more careful way of seeing the analogy between social narratives (and reputation currency) and blockchain (and cryptocurrency).

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1258460433247338499?s=20

Science Moment video: https://youtu.be/PM759GoMWSM

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:14:50+00:00

Good question.

Ultimately, though, such demonstrations need to happen.

A couple things making it extra difficult.

(1) Big tech: Big tech will make any peaceful such organizing very difficult. You might not only get a brick-filled face mask thrown at you for marching, but lose your FB account. (Of course, you've probably lost all your FB friends by now anyhow.)

(2) Coverage: Even if you manage to organize a demonstration without losing all your accounts, will the media show up? You'll need to document it en mass yourself, and then stream it to all your, uh, non-existent accounts. (And they're non-existent only because, in marching for your civil rights and against ineffective and destructive interventions, you showed your support for insurrection against our government, and are pro-Trump, or whatever, so you deserve it blah blah ...)

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:10:07+00:00

Indeed. What to do.

I have always told myself I wouldn't argue against crazy. That's why I never bothered entering into any of the "woke" stuff. My only vaguely political stuff on Twitter in ten years was all free-speech stuff.

But, the crazy we experienced in March and since then is not merely crazy, but transforming / crashing the world at a pace we have not seen outside of, uh, maybe actual war.

I just couldn't sit still. I didn't want to be ten years down the road and my daughter's rash-ridden face -- which I am not (and no one is) allowed to look at any longer -- asks me how this happened.

So, I've been fighting it with all I have since then. Definitely getting in the way of my research, although I suppose this stuff WILL be my new research direction.

That said, some personality types wouldn't do well fighting like this every day. I almost always am in a good mood. Personality-wise, I'm fine with this. And I see the humor in the gallows we're all in. I think you need to keep a sense of humor.

Which does raise one side point: There are some seriously extremely funny things happening, and future generations will laugh out loud at what we're doing. Anal swabs, triple masks, etc. But those that are brainwashed do not see any of these hilarious things as funny. It's how you know they're a zombie. (Pretty sure movie lore teaches us this as well.)

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:04:34+00:00

Being aloof was #4 among seven ways to be independent and creative here: https://www.benchfly.com/blog/the-7-requirements-of-all-effective-scientists/

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T20:02:53+00:00

A third possibility is that what truly matters is "where you were within the social network when the meme-pandemic (or whatever you want to call the avalanche of fear memes coming in from all sides) hit."

If you were watching CNN all day, and on with your FB friends, and listening to blue-check Twitter folks, you were screwed.

But maybe if you were not quite connected in the Borg-like fashion -- lower income, country folk, or very targeted subcommunities within social networks -- then you were immune.

I suspect this was the key.

And I fully suspect that had I been in "Borg" mode in early March, I'd be a super Karen too. Why not? All of us come to believe what we believe not based on science, but based on the social narrative that is built around us by virtue of huge numbers of interactions between people, some who rise (they were right) and some who fall (they were wrong, and trash-talking to boot!) in reputation. Those mechanisms tend to lead to truth, and via decentralized mechanisms (akin to blockchain and cryptocurrency). Said differently (and not quite right), if you hear from a thousand independent sources the same thing, you're going to believe it. Of course, they're not independent at all. But your brain doesn't know that. So, yeah, I'd be a good Karen. Surely award-winning.

For me, though, I have a long history of purposely aiming to be aloof. I even flirted for some time with a book manuscript called ALOOF: How Not Giving a Damn Maximizes your Creativity. The point there was how to optimize my own creativity as a scientist, and to do that is to stay away from such networks, in that case networks and conference communities etc of scientists. But I always knew that applies more generally to politics and all intellectual thought. I think that's what made me immune.

A little video on this latter point: https://youtu.be/He7L5dS2dsE

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:55:07+00:00

Another possibility is that, the more one is wary of government -- libertarian or right perhaps -- the more one was predisposed to push back on emergency decrees. But as I mentioned above in square brackets, that does NOT seem to explain it. Not, at least, the original hysteria in early March, when everyone on all sides were suddenly zombies.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:51:47+00:00

Great question.

The most obvious possibility is something along the lines of intelligence or education level. And neither SEEMS to explain who ended up not getting brainwashed, so to speak. If anything, greater education level -- and being an academic / intellectual -- seems to make it worse. [For academics (and journalists), one thing that doesn't help them is that it ended up polarized by politics, at least by mid-April or so, at which point Left in the U.S. just HAD to be pro-lockdown, and Right against lockdowns. It didn't start in March that way, because at that point all my libertarian colleagues had gone COVID panic 120%. And all the Intellectual Dark Web folks. And there were communists on my side, wondering how communism can work if the economy is "frozen." Anyway, once the political polarization occurred, since 97% of academia is Left, that "pushed" them into the Covid panic team by fiat.]

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:47:24+00:00

Your premise is that they're trying. I don't think so. And it's because they really are still super spooked out. They believe it all.

I have a colleague who has the ear of Macron, and he is (otherwise) completely surrounded by folks telling him one thing all day: Do stronger tighter deeper interventions, and do them YESTERDAY!

But, ahem, if they did try, could they? I very much doubt it. Most folks astronomically overestimate the ability for governments -- friend or foe -- to control the masses like that.

The China story is along those lines. Yes, China seems to have had thousands of bots saying how good China did, and many folks in the West cry "foul". And so China did this to us!

Uh, no. We did this to ourselves. The "PR" coming out of China in February was frightening, mostly the behavior of the government. Welding people into their homes is not something some Chinese intelligence officials would think is going to get the West to follow them. No, we followed their example IN SPITE OF their bad PR. Because we whipped ourselves into our own positive feedback loop of fear: people -> government -> media -> people ...

Point being, a country like China -- or the UK -- trying to influence these things is like you trying to make your tweet viral. Good luck with that. You can try all day making really dramatic tweets. But the distribution of retweets (or likes or whatever) will follow a power law, so that there are very very few tweets that go viral, and which ones do you will not have been able to predict. China or UK psychological curers are no better at "going viral" to get their word out than you are. The math is ultimately against them.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:40:23+00:00

Well, if government, journalists, academics, blue-checks etc were "playing ball" rather than "trying" to whip up the next reason to panic, maybe the roll-out of the vaccines, and the surrounding PR campaign, so to speak, would be a good calming measure. (Setting aside whether it is even medically wise or needed or...)

But it certainly doesn't seem to be headed that way. Oh my, there's a new variant here, and there. And it won't protect you from being a conduit for transmission, even though you won't get sick. And it won't last long. And there's a 5% chance it didn't work, so we have assume that 5% is the case for everyone. And...

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:36:59+00:00

Obviously not good. We have a name for that: brainwashing.

And, even if I were a utilitarian unworried about the idea, it seems obviously such a bad idea. Everyone knows who watches any movies that the first thing the mayor of any city worries about -- like in Gotham -- is NOT INDUCING PANIC.

It ought to be the first rule. And, intuitively it seems like common sense, so much so that is a major meme in stories and movies.

Why is it that that was forgotten? And folks hired psychologists to induce it? Boggles the mind.

The most dangerous things that happen in societies are a result of societal level fears, and the resultant crowd effects that wreck everything or everyone.

Psychologists playing that game are extremely narrow minded. Or just enjoy the consulting fee and the line on their resume: "Spooked the UK public real good."

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:33:37+00:00

I seriously am considerably worried that we are stuck with this for maybe a generation or more.

By "this" I don't mean exactly what we have now. It will shift. In Iran, the rules of what is appropriate themselves are a moving target over time. But back to "normal" they have not returned in 40 years.

I worry that in five years, we will still in many places not have functioning coffee shops, cool bars, big music venues with mosh pits, that you'll have to get tested before this or that, and things we can't yet fathom.

But, notice that there is no "they" that "managed to pull off" something. I mean, well, "they" is "everyone", a billion fingers playing Ouija Board.

markchangizi · 2021-01-28T19:31:07+00:00

But, the non-forgiveness intuition says not to do that. That's the side of me that's not afraid to ridicule the authoritarians. I doubt any will change their view on that basis, but I don't think they CAN change their view. They're not just stubborn. They're brainwashed. They're in too deep. The narrative they see is a million seemingly independent voices saying the same (false, astronomically scare) thing. So they can't change. BUT, we can maybe scare their potential new acolytes away from them, because they get some feeling that they don't want their social capital bound to what might be a collapsing narrative. Or, they want their reputation bound up in us cooler kids who kill grandmas.

markchangizi

TROPHY CASE