00:22
Hello, Len.
Hello, Asami.
So, I feel like since we started podcasting,
we've gotten into this very entertaining habit
of sharing potential topics of very serious discussion
that we do here in A.S.I.N.N.I.T.O.
And I appreciate that side effect,
because now I receive, you know,
like, not a regular, but like on a spur of random moments
type of sharing of memes or reels or articles
and other things coming from you.
And one such thing that was highly delightful,
and I will probably put a link to this if I remember it
on to the show notes,
was he a mathematician, right?
What's his name?
So, he's, yep, I've got the Instagram reel at least here.
So, this was from Oxford Mathematics, their Instagram.
And then it describes it as
when Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose goes for a walk.
Oh, yeah, he's the famous tiling guy.
Yes, right, exactly.
So, he goes on a walk.
And then, so you can, you know, click this clip
and enjoy a very delightful, what,
a minute of a mathematician describing his daily walks.
And a minute of a walk through the mind of a mathematician
talking about his walks and the way that he walks in life.
Yeah, just, you know, get meta about it.
Yeah, yeah, meta your walks.
I really loved it, because, you know, it's, like you said,
it's a peek into, you know, a mind of someone who
I would never, you know, quite think the same way that he does.
Yeah, yep.
Some, you know, benign and otherwise monotonous activity,
like walking, can be quite stimulating
and kind of, you know, so many different ways.
So, to spoil it, basically, he has this fascination
slash obsession with having to take walks every day
that are different.
So, he's looking for so many different permutations
of walking around Oxford, I'm guessing.
And, you know, Oxford is a small-ish town
03:02
and there's only so many streets.
And there's only so many ways, you know,
especially if you've been tenured for like 50 years in Oxford,
I don't know, I'm just guessing based on how he looks like.
Right?
Like, you know, you and you've had so many days
in your life in Oxford,
you have walked possibly all streets of Oxford.
And yet this guy tries to, every day,
come up with new ways to walk his walk.
And, well, one, you know, looking for unique
and original permutation on something that he does daily.
That's like, I don't know what is more mathematics,
mathematician-like than that.
Yeah, there's something about it
now that we're sort of discussing this, right?
Where I go, at first I read it as,
ah, it's a mathematician who really appreciates topology.
So topology being the field that sort of,
I think he would fairly sit within,
there's a specialty here, right,
that I'm maybe missing out on.
But, and this interest plus what he maybe enjoys, right,
has mapped its way into how he experiences things, right?
Right.
And, you know, knowing just a tiny bit
about what he got a Nobel Prize for,
like, this guy is potentially one of the, like,
one of the strongest person of recognizing patterns
in very vague and chaotic topology, right?
So it's amazing to me that, you know,
he's constantly looking for sort of unique things
in something he does daily.
So I love that.
But he also admits that, you know,
he doesn't necessarily remember every permutation
that he has done, right?
He just walks.
But he concludes that if you have 10 different trees lining up,
there are so many ways you can, you know,
go around a tree.
And that would count in his, you know,
rule book of walking as a unique walk, right?
So that's already so many new permutations
that you can generate.
Yeah, takes about a lifetime, I guess,
of a person to, you know,
discover different ways to walk around Oxford.
And I don't know if in his lifetime,
if there's been new pathway that forged
or closed down around his neighborhood.
You know, I wonder if that gets counted as a permutation.
06:02
I bet he's giddy every time he finds like a new thing
in pretty radically new thing in his walks.
Like, oh, there's a new shop here.
Now this utterly becomes a new path, right?
Like, yeah, see that.
I think this, you mentioned like giddy, right?
Because there does seem to be a sense of like joy
that he's exuding while describing.
I mean, at least I hope he is.
I think it's both, right?
Because we sort of quickly reviewed this, right?
Before starting to talk about it.
And when we got towards the end of this,
he mentions that it's a joy or that, you know,
it is interesting and maybe he enjoys it to some extent.
Well, it's also irritating.
And it's irritating.
Not in the sense of it being like complex math,
because I think he sort of waves it off
as fairly straightforward like rules
for this sort of topology problem.
But like, you do have buildings changing.
You do have like, because if a building goes away
and the building was one of the pieces
that made a path different,
then now the paths are the same.
And so that's irritating
because well, that was two paths and now it's one.
Or it could, you know, bifurcate paths somehow, right?
If you happen to have taken one.
Exactly, and I think he's obsessive in the sense
that he cares about this,
but he's not too, too obsessive in a way
that he doesn't like, you know, records it every day, right?
Like, you know, he says that he forgets it, right?
So like, it's possible that he, you know,
in his long times at Oxford walking around,
it's possible that he has indeed gone over
the exact same path twice.
But like, he's saying that statistically,
according to his rules, is pretty small, right?
And that's, I like that too.
But like, yeah, you're right.
He said in the end, I think he mentions
that it's like an interest of his
that is mildly irritating.
And I think that really encapsulates
a lot of what researchers feel about their professions.
Like, you know, I feel like I once felt that way.
So this was in my grad school,
and there was a giant storm one night
that actually, in fact, wrecked a part of the house
that I was living, which forced me to move.
That's a story for another time.
However, thankfully, I was not there
when the tree did hit the house.
So, you know, I was safe and everything.
But like, before I got that news
that my landlord is frantically trying to reach to me,
before that, I remember going to bed that night thinking,
damn, I hope my experiments are okay.
And I went to bed thinking, you know,
while hearing all the wind
09:02
and all the lightning around the bedroom.
And I was like thinking, damn,
I really hope that there's no electrical outage
in this block.
I have an experiment running overnight.
Like, damn it, I really hope it's okay.
Like, that was my thought, you know,
before I worried about my house.
So I think that's mildly, it's entertaining now
because it's a past story and nobody got hurt.
And my experiments were fine.
But it is, like now, it's just funny.
Like, that was the first thing that occurred to me.
And I'm sure to many people
who actually cares about my wellbeing,
like my landlord,
it's like a mildly irritating thing
that like, oh, Asami,
this is not the time you talk about your lasers.
And you're like, this is the only time
it has to be about my lasers.
Yeah, like, I think that I can, you know,
I'm not saying I'm comparable to a Nobel laureate,
but I am saying that I kind of see where it's coming from.
Like, people share their stories as humans
because we relate as humans, right?
And people share their stories as scholars and academics
and as different cultural, like touchstones, right?
Because we connect on those things, right?
You aren't immediately like a Nobel laureate
or comparing yourself to one, right?
You're just being like, yeah, I understand you,
fellow academic who is,
has definitely had similar experiences.
A little obsessive about minor things.
Yeah, like, right.
You also likely would have ignored the tree through your room
if you were making sure that a series of calculations
were not, you know, yet completed.
Ruined.
Like, yeah, has my chalkboard in the lecture hall been,
oh, forever?
If you had some sort of flood come down the ceiling,
like wash across like a chalkboard
you hadn't, you know, preserved yet or something.
Oh man, I could see that as like a nightmare for somebody.
Oh my God, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So I quickly typed around to see
who else had pretty obsessive walking patterns.
Oh, okay.
There are quite many of them
if we go with trustee-worthy sources of Wikipedia.
Yes, yes.
So I knew some of them.
No, more trustworthy than some sources.
Sorry, continue.
So I knew some of them.
Like Charles Darwin had a thinking path in his garden
where like he walked when he was thinking.
I have heard about this one.
Talk about being, you know, obsessive, right?
Like this, the Penrose guy,
he walked around different paths every day.
12:02
Like a little variety.
That's nice.
Darwin, on the other hand,
walked probably the same freaking path.
Like a mad person in his tiny garden.
I mean, maybe not so tiny.
I don't know, but like...
I don't know how big his garden was.
I'm not here to compare gardens,
but there's a path in your own garden.
Yeah, it was a specific path that he followed
when he's thinking.
So yeah, pretty obsessive.
Immanuel Kant is also, I think, a famous philosopher
who walked, like he had an afternoon scheduled walk every day.
He would like, you know, the clock goes out
and then he's like, time to walk.
And then he walks probably also the same path.
I don't know.
And yeah, like the list goes on.
Sigmund Freud, Steve Jobs, Frederick Nietzsche.
It would be curious to know, yeah,
what obviously this would be extraordinarily hard
to unpack at this stage, right?
Unless you could find like primary diaries
from these individuals.
Where like, what about their walk was, you know,
they may have had walk patterns or habits,
but did they also have a particular way of walking, right?
So at least for Immanuel Kant,
it seems like a pretty well-documented case.
He walked for like, to like get his body moving,
but this was also his way of stop thinking
because otherwise this dude cannot stop thinking.
And when you are doing philosophy,
and I forgot what exact flavor of philosophy Kant did,
but it's probably something pretty abstract
and, you know, existential.
I guess, you know, and he lived in a pre-smartphone era.
He needed a distraction.
And the way to do that was walking
and, you know, fair enough, right?
Yep, yep.
It's one way to do it.
I certainly, just like how you sort of really understood
the like walking pattern in the sense of, you know,
maybe that attachment to like the experiments
or something, right?
In a different line, I sort of connect with these pieces
of, you know, this constant thinking
or like awareness of the thing that you're doing.
Like, you know, you can't just go for the walk sometimes.
I, nowadays, I can just go for a walk,
but there is also a going for the walk
and being aware of like how
and where your feet are stepping
on the path that you're walking.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's a, that's a, like,
that's a legit mindfulness practice, right?
Yeah, it's mindful unless it's compulsive.
Oh, okay.
Which, which is...
Very fine line.
Right.
Like, you know, I am coming out of the version
where it was like, ah, yes, I'm doing this automatically.
15:04
And like, you know, having to do it.
Otherwise...
I think there is something meditative about walking,
whether it's scheduled or unscheduled
or, you know, premeditated pathways
or impulsive pathways.
I think there is something about, you know,
moving repetitively, you know,
maybe without having to constantly direct yourselves.
You know, like, I, like, it's different
when you're like, have a destination in mind
and you're trying to get there.
Yeah.
As opposed to just like, you know,
walking either because you already know your path
or because you don't care where you end up,
you're just walking.
Right.
Yeah, I think, I think it's pretty meditative act.
And to a certain extent,
ballet lesson also feels that way too,
because, but this is like in a little bit opposite way.
You have so much to think about.
You are forced to think about just ballet only
for that 90 minutes.
You have so many things to think about.
You know, are you turned out?
Are you engaging the right muscle?
Do you look pretty?
You know, all these other things.
And like, or do you, do you look effortless
executing this extremely difficult gymnastics?
Right.
And like so many things to think about that you like,
at least I cannot think about anything else really
in order to do, you know,
and that's like in this day and age
of full of screens and free distractions,
um, I feel like it's a pretty rare moment,
like working out and doing ballet is like a rare moment
where I like am occupied enough physically
that I can only think about it.
I'm very present, right?
In a way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, it sounds like you're not quite in this state,
which I'm about to describe
and that you've probably heard before,
but you're doing the other end of this,
perhaps multidimensional spectrum, right?
Where you've got one end
where you attempt to do the emptying of one's mind.
And you have one end where it's not,
where you're sort of trying to fill your mind.
Now you can also put that on the axis of like,
attentiveness to the emptiness or to the fullness
and inattentiveness to the emptiness.
And maybe those axes will wrap itself around
to like a similar spot at the end.
Yeah.
So I'm like, you can, you can bring these to the point
when if, if you are like perhaps attentive at either end,
they wrap around, right?
So it's like a, it's like a cylinder of a, of a map.
18:00
Yeah.
Yeah.
Topology.
Topology.
Oh man, look at that turn around.
I'd like to, I do want to end it.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Ego de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
