2024

● Monday, 1-1-2024:   Yesterday, I added sardines (one can) to my usual dinner. Today, I seemed to have much more energy than usual. It’s probably a coincidence. But I’m going to eat sardines again today with my dinner.

● Friday, 1-5-2024:   Today, for the first time in over a month and a half, I did two full exercise-walks (in the same day). During that time (the past month and a half), I was cutting the second walk short because it hurt my back. We’ll see whether this has a bad effect.

● Saturday, 1-6-2024:   A picture of a little monkey wearing a little saffron cape, with the caption: “Buddhist monkey.”

● Well, I did the full exercise-walk both yesterday and today; now, Saturday night, my back hurts more. Two full walks was premature.

● Sunday, 1-7-2024:   Today, to compensate for the excessive walking yesterday and the day before, I took just one walk.

● One reason I’ve been disinclined to have (my own, biological) children is fear that my child would be superior to me.

● Tuesday, 1-9-2024:   I sense that the increasing political upheaval and chaos in the United States is somehow a reaction to the great wealth disparity.

● Wednesday, 1-10-2024:   Your going back in time, say, to the 1930s, when you could kill Hitler to avert World War II and the Holocaust, is impossible: you’d be going back to an earlier state of affairs that never existed: you knew what Hitler would do. But no one back then knew (beforehand) what Hitler would do . . .. And your averting the Holocaust would be problematic in two ways: One, you probably wouldn’t have been born. Two, world history would then be different. But there can be just one history. What would happen to the history containing the Holocaust? Would it suddenly change status from the actual history to an imaginary history?

● Friday, 1-12-2024:   I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal (it took about a month). The editing was very fruitful. I was pleased with much of the material. But I was a little shocked to find that the year 2023 seems to be another virtual dead zone.

● Sunday, 1-14-2024:   Every day, especially when I’m home all day, with no deposition to handle, and when I’m between read-through’s of my Journal, is a battle, not even so much with neighbors, as mainly with myself: to muster the will and the energy, for about six hours’ time (between breakfast and dinner) to do more-or-less productive (or at least constructive) tasks, like reading Robert Graves’s The Reader Over Your Shoulder.

● Wednesday, 1-17-2024:   Yesterday I sent this email to LearnDesk (it needs no explanation):

I just got my credit card bill, and was shocked to see a charge of $299.95 by you. I had no intention of renewing my arrangement with you. I got zero benefit from it, and I abandoned it. Please immediately reverse the charge to my credit card, and delete any authorization I may have inadvertently given you for recurrent charges.

Richard J. Eisner

● Thursday, 1-18-2024:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was attending a camp with Mozart. I acknowledged that he was a musical genius, but I thought I was a better graphic artist than he was. I don’t know whether that was much consolation.

● Sunday, 1-21-2024:   Philosophy Club. Here’s the topic, and my response:

“Does art created by artificial intelligence count as true art?” My first impression is: No, because computers are not creative. On second thought, speaking strictly, I would say the following. Perhaps a better question is whether artificial-intelligence-generated “art” counts as great art. Most artwork that humans produce is not great; artificial intelligence may be able to produce artwork that’s as good as mediocre (or even good) manmade artwork. Perhaps we must answer the question on an ad hoc, case-by-case, basis, the same basis on which we would judge a human’s art. That is, we examine each work generated by artificial intelligence, and decide whether it’s great. If we find one that’s great, we’ll have answered the question: “Yes, artificial intelligence can make great art.” Not finding one doesn’t mean that it can’t happen—it means only that it hasn’t happened yet. (The longer we try without succeeding, though, the more doubtful we may become about its being possible.) The original question should logically be, not does it count as true (or great) art?, but can it? But I think we can at very least conclude that, for creating art, natural intelligence is far superior to artificial intelligence.

● Wednesday, 1-24-2024:   Donald Trump’s chronic lying serves another purpose as he grows old: as a cover for senility. When he states a falsehood, he’d rather that people think, “He’s lying again” than, “He’s losing his memory.”

● I recently heard a story about a woman who, in order to safeguard her own health, needed to abort her doomed, brainless fetus, but was prohibited from doing so because of her state, Texas’ abortion ban. I call the right-wing politicians and judges responsible for that policy the Texas Taliban.

● I’ve said that well-being consists of an objective element (namely, happiness) and a subjective element (our wishes, interests, goals, and suchlike). What of the person whose one wish is to be happy? Because happiness cannot be achieved by aiming at it directly, “searching for happiness” is problematic. The happiest people are those who pursue interests or goals besides happiness.

● Saturday, 1-27-2024:   Haircut (Brenda).

● When I occasionally remove litter from common areas in this apartment complex, I think of myself as a good Samaritan. And yet, it’s only the common areas where I live, and usually the areas closest to my own apartment.

● Sunday, 1-28-2024:   Desert ride; pleasant. Traffic was lighter than usual. I ate a bean and cheese burrito at Tom’s #25 in West Palmdale. It was good. The trip took 8 hours, including my hour-and-a-quarter nap in the parking lot of Tom’s after the meal.

● Monday, 1-29-2024:   I struggle for clarity as a diver struggles up to the surface of the water for breath.

● Thursday, 2-1-2024:   I’m beginning another read-through of my Journal. This last break, about two and a half weeks, was unusually long.

● On a neighborhood electronic bulletin board, a person wrote that he needed to find a new home to rent, and would be grateful if someone could “point him in the right direction.” It occurred to me to reply, “Northwest.”

● On that neighborhood electronic bulletin board, a woman recommended getting a dog for protection against theft. Among other things, she said, “You’ll sleep more soundly knowing you’re protected.” I replied with this: “You’ll sleep more soundly” . . . unless you’re woken up by the dogs’ barking!

● Sunday, 2-4-2024:   For the first time in the many years that I’ve been patronizing them, The Best Nails manicurists missed our usual biweekly appointment. They didn’t open the shop this morning. I hope they’re all right.

● On this read-through of my Journal, I’m making fewer edits than usual—many fewer than the last time . . . but there are enough of them to warrant the effort.

● Many items of women’s clothing, leaving so much skin exposed, strike me as very anti-utilitarian—don’t the women feel cold?!

● Monday, 2-5-2024:   I got the manicure today. They were all right; they just forgot to calendar my appointment for yesterday (that’s what they said).

● Saturday, 2-10-2024:   In response to my request, my physician, Dr. Bhat, M.D., has referred me to an orthopedist for the pain in both of my arms. He also prescribed a week’s regimen of steroids, Prednisone, 20 mg (two tablets a day) which I’ll start taking Monday, 2-12-2024. I know from experience that the Prednisone affects me like a stimulant: it produces energy and euphoria.

● Monday, 2-12-2024:   I was right about the Prednisone: I had two depositions today. Very unusually, even uniquely, I was not tired during either of them. And when I got home, I still had enough energy and motivation to read my Journal, for editing. What a day!

● Tuesday, 2-13-2024:   It’s been in the news that, sometime in the last several days, the Israelis freed two Israeli hostages, in the course of which they executed a “diversionary” tactic of killing 60 Palestinian civilians! Where is the outcry at the disproportionateness of that action?!

● Thursday, 2-15-2024:   Apparently the steroid I’m taking now (Prednisone) is slightly different than the one I took in 2005, which was Methylprednisolone. I found the side effects of the Methylprednisolone even more satisfying.

● Thursday, 2-22-2024:   In a television program, the narrator said that whales have such strong emotional bonds with one another that, when one of them is harpooned, other whales come toward it; they don’t swim away, as we humans would do. But I wonder if that behavior is a product, not of strength of bonds, but of lack of understanding. That is, if they understood the danger, they might swim away.

● Saturday, 2-24-2024:   Philosophy Club; topic: “The relationship of etiquette to ethics.” My answer: Ethics is a general theory about how we should act, in relation to other sentient beings, especially other people. Etiquette is a body of specific proposed guidelines about socially appropriate behavior. Utilitarianism is one ethical theory, for example. It says that we should aim to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Rule Utilitarianism is a version of Utilitarianism that holds that the most effective way to bring about the greatest happiness is to follow specific rules of conduct, but without specifying the rules. Etiquette is a set of specific rules, among those that a Rule Utilitarian might mean we should follow.

● Sunday, 2-25-2024:   I’m in a sort of crisis with my car. For a year or so, it’s been emitting visible smoke from the tailpipe, when I first start it when the engine is cold. I’ve brought it to my mechanic to repair that, among other problems. But he seems unable or unwilling to fix it. I may have to get a new car, which will be expensive.

● It’s been three and a half months since I last had a headache (bad enough to need medication). That’s the longest headache-free span I can remember.

● Friday, 3-1-2024:   Yesterday (3-29-2024) I finally had a headache bad enough to need medication. The last one was on 11-10-2023. That’s a span of 3 months, 19 days: a record!

● Sunday, 3-3-2024:   I’ve just finished the latest read-through of the Journal. This one took just over 30 days. I added three pages’ worth of new material at the end. I’ll again take a break of about two weeks before starting another read-through.

● I think, lately, aware that the material in my Journal has become too diluted, and aware that I lack the discipline to delete entries from the Journal or to be selective in adding diary entries to it, I’ve begun to compensate by being more restrained in writing in the diary.

● For several years in my early thirties, shortly after that terrible loss of my writing, I suffered from an extreme case of writer’s block. I remember I started to write a summary of my philosophy, but wrote just a few sentences, surely no more than a paragraph or two. I carried that paper with me, always hoping to expand the piece, but nothing more would come. I feel as if I’ve since made up for it. Eventually, the block broke, releasing a huge volume of ink, which has filled up page after page after page . . . though not all of it is philosophy, or even philosophical.

● Tuesday, 3-5-2024:   Religion creates, for the believer, a Disneyland of the mind.

● I didn’t know there were so many boating enthusiasts. It seems every other news item I hear these days is about boating and the boaters.

● Saturday, 3-9-2024:   The Prednisone I took for seven days a few weeks ago seems to have had a good effect on my various orthopedic symptoms. I took it for my right forearm, but the most noticeable improvement has been in my lower back, which I think has finally returned to the condition it was in just before that very severe backache in August 2023 (seven months ago). That’s a very good development! I hope it lasts.

● Sunday, 3-10-2024:   I drove my rented Nissan Altima car to Tom’s #25, in West Palmdale, this morning, and had my lately accustomed bean and cheese burrito for breakfast. As usual, it was good. I took an hour’s nap in the car. Then, as I went to exit the parking lot, I found that my CD player was broken, and so I couldn’t play recorded music. The lack of music would ruin the enjoyment of the trip, so I aborted my intended desert ride, and went back home. I replaced the broken CD player with a working one (I periodically buy—used—replacements, knowing that they don’t last long).

● I’ve said that a fringe benefit of stopping taking naps was the elimination of frequent headaches. I must modify that statement. For many months now I’ve been taking naps almost daily—either in my car with the seat reclined or in my apartment with my head on the desk or table, albeit shorter naps than I used to take lying in bed. But my headaches have been no more frequent during that time. I suspect that what has helped the headaches is, not abstaining from naps, but going to bed at night and getting up in the morning at consistent times.

● Monday, 3-11-2024:   I dreamt that I was a matador fighting (a bull) in a bullring atop a few railroad cars, so that either the matador or the bull could be killed by going over the side and plunging to the ground. But in this one fight, I killed the bull in the usual way, by goring him with my spears.

● Tuesday, 3-12-2024:  I do my laundry once a week. Some items I wash every week. Others I wash every other week. So I alternate: one week I wash a small batch; the next, a big batch. To aid my memory of which it is this week, I keep a stack of eight quarters on my dresser. To indicate that this is the small-batch week, I divide the coins into two (smaller) stacks; for a big-batch week, I combine the coins in a single stack. Every time I do the laundry, I switch the configuration of the coins.

● Another strange phrase is “more than happy”; as in, “I’d be more than happy to do it.” I know what happy is. I know what extremely happy is. But what are you feeling if you’re “more than happy”?! If and when you’re “more than happy,” are you also happy? Are you feeling something in addition to happiness? Or is it merely an illogical way of saying “happy,” or “glad,” or “willing”?

● Friday, 3-15-2024:  Orthopedic update: my back is still good. But my right forearm symptoms have returned, albeit mildly. Last week I did the renewed exercises for my left shoulder too vigorously, which has injured my left arm.

● Saturday, 3-16-2024:   I’ve begun another read-through of my Journal.

● Tuesday, 3-19-2024:  A true god, as traditionally defined, is logically impossible. A very powerful invisible being masquerading as a true god, is logically possible, but practically impossible. Such a being could make philosophical zombies, which, therefore, are likewise logically possible, but practically impossible.

● Wednesday, 3-20-2024:   I got an email from a civics organization, which posed this question: “Why is it important for women to exercise their right to vote?” The email purported to provide an answer. I replied thus: “I agree that it’s important that women vote. But is it important that women vote for a different reason than that it’s important that men vote?”

I then got a message saying that my reply could not be delivered. That’s all right with me; I wrote it, not for their benefit, but for mine (for my Journal).

● Sunday, 3-24-2024:  Philosophy Club. Topic: “Would you choose to enter the experience machine?” Brian Gould’s introduction to the topic includes these words: “Consider the experience machine, one of the most famous thought experiments in philosophy.

“You can choose to permanently enter a virtual reality/brain stimulation machine that immerses you in a subjective world you fully believe to be real, one in which you have the experiences you most desire to have and that make you as happy as you can be . . ..

“Once you enter the experience machine, it adjusts your memory so that you won’t realize you are in the machine. The machine will not malfunction or produce any untoward side effects. The real world will be no worse off nor better off if you plug in to the machine.”

My response: The last sentence in the introduction (“The real world will be no worse off nor better off if you plug in to the machine”) is inapposite. A person may indeed have a good or a bad effect on the real world, which effect (further effect) would be nullified by his entering the machine. And in deciding whether to enter it, he might consider that.

● In his essay “The Spoils of Happiness,” David Sosa writes that we, or most of us, would choose not to enter the experience machine because the happiness we get in the real world is somehow superior to the artificially-generated happiness of the machine. I agree that most of us would decline the machine, but not because the happiness it produces is somehow inferior to real-world happiness. There are not different forms or kinds of happiness (some of which might be better than others). Happiness is happiness is happiness. The reason we would decline the experience machine is, rather, that we want desiderata besides (in addition to) happiness.

● We can know relative well-being, but not absolute well-being. That is, while we cannot know a person’s level of well-being, or just what elements constitute it, except perhaps in a very general or broad sense; we may be able to know what will increase or decrease it. For example, we may know that a sick man’s well-being will increase if he recovers from the sickness; or that a poor man’s well-being will increase if he acquires more money; or that anyone’s well-being will increase if he becomes happier or less unhappy.

● Within the experience machine, a person affects the real world, both negatively and positively: negatively, by his absence from the world; and positively, by increasing the world’s happiness (by definition, or by supposition, he’s happier in the machine than out of it).

● Friday, 3-29-2024:   Well, it happened again: I shat myself on my daily walk. That’s bound to happen occasionally. For the last ten years or so, I’ve taken a mineral supplement that counteracts my natural tendency to constipation. It’s impossible to get the dosage exactly right. So, practically, I’ll have either a bit of constipation, or a bit of the opposite problem. I’d rather have the opposite problem, which I manage pretty well. But I have to be careful.

● Tuesday, 4-2-2024:  In this read-through of the Journal, I’ve been making many good changes. On one hand, I’m surprised that I’m still finding edits. On the other hand, with nearly 700 pages’ worth of material, it would be even more surprising if I weren’t finding any.

● Wednesday, 4-3-2024:   I had another in a series of recurrent dreams in which I was a painter struggling—unsuccessfully—to learn my craft. I felt desperate. I thought I was fast running out of time to learn. I wondered whether I should abandon traditional ways of learning and simply spend my time trying to paint, and hopefully learn by trial and error.

● Friday, 4-5-2024:  Economists cheerily speak of the low level of unemployment in the country, and wonder why, despite the “good economy,” people feel so bad. But I’d like to ask them (the economists): “If you had one of those (low-wage, arduous, menial) jobs, how would you feel about it?! It’s like expecting someone in hell to be happy because he’s not in the worst level of hell.

● Good news and bad news: My rent was raised again; but it’s a very modest increase. The rent is still relatively low.

● Saturday, 4-6-2024:   I plan to take my desert ride tomorrow. It will probably be the last time it’s cool enough for it until next Fall.

● I have a backache, the first one I’ve had since I took the Prednisone (the steroid) in February 2024. I’ll suspend my stretching and walking exercises until it passes.

● Sunday, 4-7-2024:  Desert ride. I drove a rented Chevrolet Malibu; it’s a pretty good car. I got my usual bean and cheese burrito at Tom’s #25 in West Palmdale. This time it was not satisfying. I think it had more to do with my receptivity (for one thing, I wasn’t very hungry) than with the food itself. For the first time in years, perhaps in decades, the stream was flowing at my half-way stopping place, the “Four Oaks.” But I was too uncomfortably cold to be able to enjoy it. I used a brand new (and a new brand) CD player to play country music CDs. It’s not ideal—it’s not as good as the old Sony model I’ve been using (when it works)—but it’s adequate. The approximate first half of the ride was profoundly pleasant (I felt a marvelous sense of accomplishment, in my body of work, even in the portion of it that survives); the second half of the ride was mildly pleasant.

● Mercifully, today the backache is much better, though not fully resolved.

● Monday, 4-8-2024:   I got yet another COVID-19 vaccination today.

● My back has almost completely returned to normal (normal for me).

● Wednesday, 4-10-2024:  The backache has completely resolved.

● Friday, 4-12-2024:   In the last few years, I’ve noticed long stretches of freeway surface damaged by some sort of tractor or tire tread.

● Sunday, 4-14-2024:   Here’s the review I wrote of the new portable radio and CD player I recently bought for the car: The GPX Portable CD Player with FM Radio is very badly designed. You cannot preset stations on the radio. The next best thing would be to leave the radio tuned to the station you listen to the most. But you can’t even do that. After turning off the radio, when you turn it on again, it’s not on the station you last listened to. Every time you turn on the radio, you have to search for your station from scratch, and it’s not easy. The CD player isn’t much better. There’s no way to stop or pause the play so that it will resume playing a CD where you left off listening: it starts at the beginning of the CD every time. For example, say you’re listening to a CD with 20 songs, and you’re on song number 15. You stop driving to get a cup of coffee. When you get back in the car and want to continue listening—to song number 15—you have to press the skip button 15 (or 14) times to get there (and you have to either start at the beginning of song 15 or at the start of song 16). All in all, this device is so cumbersome to operate as to be practically unusable. If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if it was a joke, perhaps a Candid Camera prank.

● Monday, 4-15-2024:   Any sublime experience you have while in hospital is probably a result of drugs.

● Wednesday, 4-17-2024:   I feel de-energized and vaguely achy—as if I’m sick, but without being sick.

● Thursday, 4-18-2024:  The symptoms have gone.

● Sunday, 4-21-2024:  Passover is “the Jewish holiday celebrating the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt.” (Wikipedia.) I think, if I were a religious Jew, I’d have trouble getting into the spirit of Passover, knowing that Israelites (or Israelis), far from being the sympathetic oppressed people they once were, are now evildoers.

● Wednesday, 4-24-2024:   Bone density test yesterday.

● Donald Trump’s criminal trial for covering up hush-money payments to a pornography actress has begun. I heard that, in his opening statement, Trump’s lawyer vehemently attacked, as untrustworthy and dishonest, prosecution witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer.” That tactic is a double-edged sword: the danger, for Trump, is that it suggests that the substance of Cohen’s testimony, if believed, is harmful to Trump’s case.

● Saturday, 4-27-2024:  Haircut (Brenda).

● Philosophy Club tomorrow. Topic: “Free will.” I’ve written much on free will. So I won’t write on it further. But I’ll read the assigned articles.

● The article on Free Will in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that most philosophers agree that causal determinism is a contingent matter, not necessarily true or necessarily false. That means that there are possible worlds not governed by causal determinism. And yet, I can’t imagine a world without causal determinism . . . or with free will. Perhaps my understanding is incomplete. . . . I just remembered that I have an argument proving that free will is impossible, and which argument doesn’t involve causal determinism. It’s my essay titled “The Impossibility of Knowledge, Free Will, and God.”

Here’s the statement I’ll make at the Philosophy Club meeting: All the arguments against free will presented in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article are based on causal determinism. The article says that most philosophers agree that causal determinism is a contingent matter, neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. Which implies that free will is possible, even if it doesn’t exist in this world. I have an argument that free will is impossible, but which doesn’t involve the concept of causal determinism. Here it is: [omitted]

● I had planned to share my arguments on free will with the Philosophy Club group. But I didn’t, because I was afraid that someone would steal my ideas. I’m in the process of applying for copyright protection, which I haven’t yet received.

● In the Philosophy Club discussion this evening, one participant said that she votes, and she thinks everyone should vote. I commented: “I don’t think everyone should vote: I think that right-wingers should stay home and relax.”

● Monday, 4-29-2024:  Israel’s name for its military, Israeli Defense Forces, is a euphemism with chutzpah!

● Saturday, 5-4-2024:  Yesterday I went to the bank to deposit paychecks totaling $33,000—I’d saved them up for several months (I wanted to wait till my tax-payment checks had cleared my account before depositing more money into it). But I could deposit only $13,000 of it, because Lance had only that much money in the bank account on which the checks were drawn. I’ll call his office on Monday. I’m sure the problem was a result of mere inadvertence on their part.

● Monday, 5-6-2024:   I’ve decided not to call them (Lance’s office), but rather to just periodically try to cash those checks. If the omission was indeed inadvertent, I should be able eventually to cash them that way.

● Tuesday, 5-7-2024:   I went to the bank today, and was able to deposit all the rest of the checks.

● I fear that Donald Trump may well win the U.S. presidential election again this year. A great many people here are suffering and angry. Unfortunately, it could be that simple.

● Wednesday, 5-8-2024:   I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal. This one took a month and three weeks, longer than usual because I did it very leisurely and I was busy with other tasks. I made fewer edits than I usually do, but still enough to have made the effort worthwhile. I added six pages of new entries at the end; the piece is now 674 pages long, in my word processing document.

● Thursday, 5-9-2024:  The Jewish people were chosen by God . . . to massacre the Palestinian people.

● A sure sign of Spring: the big aromatic bush that I pass on my walks has begun to emit fragrance.

● I think the climate in my little neighborhood is changing: In the last few years, the very hot part of the year—Spring and Summer—has been significantly shorter. It seems as if it will be so this year as well. It’s almost mid-May, and the weather is still cool.

● I just awoke from a dream. I was in late college or graduate school, and soon to graduate and start a professional career. I was in a quandary over what to study and to choose as my career. I had been studying law, but turned it down as a career because I found it tedious. Instead, I chose the kind of work involved in the last class I happened to take: studying bird biology. In the last scene in the dream, I was meeting with the professor—I was the only student in the class (it was so late in the school year that she was meeting with me specially, not as part of a regularly scheduled class)—and I was explaining to her my decision about this. At one point in my explanation, I was showing her a scene of a hypothetical legal case, a traffic collision. I said something like, “I find it so boring that I couldn’t even remember the color of the sky, and we both, unsuccessfully, tried to remember the color of the sky. Then the scene zoomed in on the cars involved in the massive gridlock/collision. There were many newish luxury cars; one was a new, white Rolls Royce. I think it was somehow a reference to the potential lucrativeness of a legal career, wealth that I somehow missed. But my point was that law was out of the question because I hated the work. This dream came just a few hours after I added a note in this Journal to an entry of 1-26-2001, in which I express an insight about the difference between humans and lower animals. I interpret the study of bird biology as symbolizing my desire to write: when I write, I fly. . . .