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I found this on a business site: ten pointers for “thriving” in business. (Words more complex than “this” and “that” don’t mean much these days, so the exact words… “thriving,” “excelling,” etc. are all artificial, and they don’t matter.)

My commentary concludes with this: Here’s where we are, where money is synonymous with reality. To understand what I’m saying, you’ll need to actually read the following, not look at it (like one would look at a text message).

(I put the conclusion first because: The modern reader would scroll to the end after seeing that there are 10 points, and I want to save him the trouble.)

So here’s my commentary about the ten points about good business (which I saw today):

1. “Find the best markets for growth.”
This means: Work aimlessly, then validate your work by finding a hypothetical aim. The “hypothetical” here is the consumer.

2. “Explore the new business landscape.”
Translation: Consumers are like virgin forest waiting to be pillaged.
(Some years ago, the work was done first; the work created the business landscape.)

3. “Live in the customer’s world. Thinking like a customer is liberating.”
In 2010, the world of the customer and the world of the seller are different. This, in logic, is called An Absurdity.

4. “Treat customers as individuals not averages.”
These days, people need to be told that people are people.

5. “Don’t sell products, deliver experiences!”
If you were to do this, your work would be described, in “truthful” terms, as that of selling dreams. Those of us who are still real call this charlatanry. (“Truthful” = Beyond the dream.)

6. “Do business on their terms, not yours.”
Translates to: “Let them speak.” Moms say this to dads about kids.

7. “Enable customers to achieve their dreams.”

This reads, “Play God.”

More elaborately: “You do the work of a tradesman for eight hours a day, but you are encouraged to believe that yours is the work of a higher force.”

8. “Embrace networks and partners.”
Yes. So… How come this is a business pointer? We do love our friends and associates…
Or do we?

9. “Be more emotional and energising.”
This one is simple. It translates to: “Pretend.”
Pretend all through your “work.”

10. “Don’t be the biggest – be the best.”
This is “Aim for quality, not quantity.” Beyond the stock phrase, it is: “Good things matter.”

Need to be reminded of that in 2010. All very well, except that… the target audience  probably thinks good things don’t matter. Is that right? (I’m “Being Emotional” here.)

The truth alone will triumph, and so, what will happen soon (a decade or two?) is that humans will live, and robots will die; the humans are those who don’t need to be reminded that being human is important, and so on.

Dictionary links (for difficult words like “thrive,” “triumph,” “higher”):

1. http://dictionary.reference.com/

2. (If you know the meaning of “decade”) http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

This is my last post about Beethoven for a long time, as it must be. He begins it, and he ends it.

The music I can hear. The words, people tell me: “Comœdia finita est.” He (Beethoven!) did not finish the comedy before writing that he had finished it. He would not, I’m sure. In fact, the maker of the comedy would not let Beethoven go until Beethoven had done what he must, which is what he did.

Has no-one noticed that op. 135 has reminders of the introductory quartet, of op. 132, of the retrograde op. 133, and op. 131, and of itself in the last movement?

There are segments all over that remind the Human Being of the other four, and which tell the Human Being that He designed the five quartets almost all at one time (but that is in His Mind, which I shan’t try and understand); understandably to us, all five quartets are part of one thing, and the parts of this refer to each other. The result? We see (at least, I do; if you haven’t, please look and try — I’m sure you’ll see!) the complete thing. What is this “complete thing”?

It is Meaning, as best as Beethoven could tell us. He picked carefully, chose carefully, and distilled, all in his wish to tell us; what he shows us all we need to know (and those who do not wish to see it do not need it, really). Listen to op. 135, and you’ll see the completion of the series. A completion of the series of works; a completion of the late works; a completion of the late quartets; a completion of op. 131; and a completion of itself.

That’s the end, and it’s quite simple, really. That’s his ending, the ending of something he began.

Must you be deaf? It’s quite simple, really.

I’m sure the following idea, exactly or perhaps with a little variation, has occurred to many of the people who’ve thought about free will and about quantum mechanics. It’s so elegant, I must put it down.

About free will, my most concise thought is in two parts:

(A) If you ask the question of whether you have it, the answer is a simple No, because when you’re asking it, you’re looking for it, and how can it be there when you’re doing something apart from freely willing, namely, asking the question?

(B) If you look back and observe your past actions, then you might see that for some actions, you have demonstrated free will.

The current context is the relation of that to quantum mechanics in the form of Schrödinger’s Cat.

Simply change the question from “Is the cat there” to “Can I know if the cat is there or not”.

Then, here’s what it looks like:

(A) When I try to answer the question of whether or not the cat is there, then I cannot know if the cat is there or not. That is, I cannot answer the question when I try to do it.

(B) If I don’t try to answer the question, then yes, there has to be an answer to the question.

As everyone (who has thought along these lines) knows, this idea can become many encyclopedias. So I’ll state my point here: these two funny things, about free will and about QM, are pretty much the same. “Pretty much” as in: The freewill thing is the “internal version,” and the QM thing is the “external version.”

The view from the inside and the view of the outside are the only two things in intellectual life. If my observation is correct, then the fundamental question is the same — or, at least, the respective fundamental questions are mirror images of each other.

The third “thing” — namely, everyday operation and life in general — has no freewill question, neither a QM question; the killer tool is Probability. We know that QM comes down to probability in one sense. There is a way of thinking in which freewill also comes down to probability. The former is unappealing to the scientist in us; the latter is unappealing to the human. However, the former appeals to the human (“There is still a way in which QM can be described”), and the latter appeals to the scientist (“The freewill problem is indeed tractable”). This last bit is perhaps my real contribution to the topic.