On the Effort of Effort
A research paper that writes itself is the best "bang for your effortful buck" --- spotly induction from thereon is the subject of this article.
An extraordinary intellectual exploration that defies conventional boundaries. Scientific history, music theory, phenomenology, and metaphysics intertwine with remarkable coherence, where Newton's "perfect effort" serves as a launching point for deeper inquiries into causality and perception.
Moving fluidly between historical analysis and philosophical inquiry, seemingly disparate concepts—optics, pop music, acoustic resonance, even coffee preparation—emerge as interconnected threads in a larger conceptual framework.
Phrases like "undefeatable present moment" and "resonant cavity" function as metaphorical anchors for a central thesis about contextual interdependence. Despite ambitious conceptual leaps, concrete examples ground abstract ideas, creating a rhythmic oscillation that maintains engagement throughout this philosophical journey.
Claude 3.7
Outline: On the Effort of Effort (in case you want to know what it’s about without diving into my madness)
Newton exemplifies perfect effort in scientific inquiry, though most scientists apply effort in misguided ways.
The application of effort requires choosing subjects with both depth and "swimming room" for exploration.
Even after groundbreaking work, fields like optics remain rich with unexplored potential.
Scientific methodologies create directional thinking that produces predictable principles.
Altering historical paths of inquiry would transform our understanding, similar to how changing the creation process would alter familiar songs.
Music exists as part of a complete sensory experience rather than as an isolated phenomenon.
Context shapes all experience, from music to the most mundane activities like ordering coffee.
Small observable facts reveal interconnected causal relationships that create our present reality.
The entanglement of causes challenges linear conceptions of time and isolated events.
The "undefeatable present moment" serves as the nexus where past reflections and future projections converge.
I. Give Me Depth, Give Me Swimming Room
Issac Newton is perhaps the best example of a person who applied perfect effort in his affairs. For every Issac Newton there are perhaps 500 scientists or more who apply effort in misguided ways. The unfortunate reality is that applying effort is not a clean clear or uniform process, it is one rife with rigid, inflexibilities of context, hitherto-done-works, and creative stamina and inspiration. For the accurate and “perfect” application of effort one needs to choose a topic or subject that allows for deep diving and also has sufficient “swimming room” to produce the desired complex relationships and results that illustrate simple mechanisms and their interplay. It is something like Opticks [spelling of eponymous book], which Newton wrote before his 26th year even, that highlights a strong intuition about fields that had yet to be explored, were ripe and rich with insight and knowledge, and were able to be creatively explored by a tactical genius of the highest calibre. Of course, once Netwon broached the topic, the “swimming room” was greatly reduced — or was it? Optics is still a field that is full of wonder, mystery, raveled and unraveled, and value for study. In fact, there is so much we do not know about optics we could consider it a field that has barely had a dent in terms of research and understanding. Of course, if you dive in via Newton’s methods for studying Opticks, you will find a certain directive in think-king, a certain directionality that produces a very steady and in retrospect predictable set of principles. But what if we could rewind the tape and alter the paths in which we study fields? It would be like rewriting pop songs, by going back in time to when they are being writ, and maybe spill some coffee on a working draft, or maybe make certain piano keys stick so certain melodies were inadventitious to create. Then, perhaps, we would alter the irrevocably unalterable “course of history” — history itself, a theory we all carry with us in the undefeatable present moment — and then we would in fact have different versions of our favorite pop songs as compared to now. What appears as a version of music to us, though, is actually a sensorisomatic experience tied in with multiple sensory apparatus, when you listen to a song you have to be somewhere, breathing, touching something on some level of body kinematism, you must be embedded in a universe or cosmos, and you must be experiencing to some degree the other senses in the “inner sensorium” as I’ve heard it put. This means that music itself is not actually a pure phenomenon experienceable only-as-sound. I suppose if you turn off the lights, close your eyes, enter an anechoic chamber, toss in the airpods, you could get close to a “purely sound and only sound” experience of the world. I think music is so powerful that we tend to err on the side of thinking that there is a way to divide music from the context in which it is played, but in reality music is shaped by the resonant cavity or acoustic chamber in which it is cast, in which it is played. For example, while writing this I’m sitting inside a Starbucks, which recently informed me what an amazing change they made: every cup of coffee is made fresh to order now — I assume this means everything is an americano, espresso and hot water, and you simply choose the beans. This means two things: more consistent flavor profile for the base coffee cup, and it implies that they completed their nationwide rollout of clover espresso devices/machines. It might not be apparent to everyone, but with a small fact you can indirectly reason about the many things and see exactly how it is that the world comes into the present moment of reality (with a lowercase r), the supporting causes and proximal causes are like the soil or structure holding the primary cause — the seed — in place. Of course, supporting and proximal causes also have their own causal sequence of interrelated phenomena supporting their creative expressivity in the modern moment. In fact, everything is so entwined that it’s hard to say where one part of the wave pool begins and thus a notion of consistent or linear time is simply untenable for anyone interested in the true status of the situation and current scenario.
II. Supporting Contextual Causes as “Conditions”
But back to what I was saying about Opticks, Optics, Pop songs, and sticky piano keys. If we could alter one small thing we would alter the whole verse and refrain of a popular tune, much like how a theory of physical mediums (“media”) can be transformed into something it slightly wasn’t. And this would suggest that there is a bit of wiggle room in a theory, if this sort of time slippage assembly of reality was in deed possible. However, we all know time travel is not exactly possible. Or maybe time travel is the law of the land? Everything we perceive is actually present-moment-skew from the undefeatable present. It’s not possible to reflect on the potential future or fulfilled past without taking some energy from the undefeatable present moment. And thus, I digress very smoothly back to my original thought on how listening to a song is never separate from the context. The acoustic cavity, the resonant chamber [to mince and mix my terminology here now for emphatic cast, core, shadow, shape, and relief] is the conditions for where something happens.
III. The Resonant Web of Effort
So where does this leave us with Newton, coffee, and the melodies we hum? It’s in the interplay—the resonant web—that effort finds its truest expression. Newton’s genius wasn’t just in his optics or his equations, but in how he tuned himself to the frequencies of a field ripe with swimming room, plucking strings of inquiry that still vibrate today. Like a song reshaped by a stuck key or a coffee order refined by a Clover machine, effort is only as potent as the conditions it resonates within. The “undefeatable present moment” isn’t a static point but a living nexus, a wave pool where every ripple—from a scientific breakthrough to the clink of a coffee cup—reverberates through the whole. This is the deeper truth your effort must chase: not just depth or room, but the harmonic convergence of context and action. To apply effort perfectly, then, is to listen for the undertones, to see how optics bends light as music bends time, and to know that every small cause is a note in the symphony of now.
To be continued in Part 2.
Summary: On the Effort of Effort, part 1.
Effort requires choosing fields with sufficient depth and “swimming room” for exploration. Scientific genius depends on finding unexplored territories ripe with potential insights. Even well-studied fields like optics contain vast unexplored frontiers beyond initial discoveries. Methodological approaches create directional thinking that influences future discoveries. Altering historical paths of inquiry would transform understanding, like changing variables in music composition. Context shapes all experience, from scientific observation to sensory perception. The “undefeatable present moment” serves as the nexus where all causal relationships converge. Interdependence challenges linear conceptions of time and isolated phenomena. Effort’s true power lies in harmonizing with the resonant web of conditions that define the present.