Biology is ridden with this right now—terms in immediate danger of inflating into their own universe include:
“sytems biology” “High throughput” “Integrative”
As well of course as the old favourites—“complexity” and “emergence”. I’m reminded of Steven Pinkers “euphemistic treadmill”. In both cases we have words losing their information content through use—losing meaning in terms of information, and in the latter sense at least gaining in in terms of emotional weight. Maybe there’s a general tendency for words to melt out into smears across meaning-space because of the way we learn them by association? After all the process if unbounded should lead you to associate words with everything right?
I’m interested in the opposite of mindfullness—absent mindedness—why it exists and how mutable it is. I have, it must be said, a particularly diffuse personality - I forget things, a lot, put things down and forget where they are, fail to plan things. Introspection identifies this as a mixture of acrasia and propensity to boredom—I find it very difficult to concentrate on mundane things instead of thinking about neural networks or politics.
I’ve unfortunately chosen a line of work (molecular biology) that punishes absent mindedness ruthlessly. After months of failure and avoidable errors, and experimentation with checklists etc etc. mindfulness meditation appears to be helping. It’s also transforming my experience of life in general—meditation led me to end a stagnant relationship, and seems to be effecting my thoughts on political matters.
I seem to have benefited uncommonly from meditation. I ruminate less, I work more, and I’m even starting to lose things less. Has anyonebody else with this personality trait found the same?