Reading all the books

On machine learning, Mescaline and the pitfalls of a wooden dildo

Actual picture of me, trying to order my thoughts on machine learning.

This week I wanted to write about Joel — my Joel, this Joel —’s new job and going to see Hamnet, the play. As you may have picked up from previous posts, he’s a software engineer of very respectable pedigree and his new job has something to do with SEO.

I wasn’t initially clear how those two things were connected but it turns out what connects them is a little-known phrase in Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book The Doors of Perception.

The phrase is this:

The consciousness of having read all the books.

I jotted this down years ago and it stuck with me, albeit now divorced from context.

A brief recap: Doors of Perception is Huxley’s famous (less famous than Brave New World but still famous) book documenting his (and his wife’s) mescaline trips and what it did to alter (heighten?) their perceptions of consciousness. I seem to recall he used this particular phrase semi-mockingly, referring to people hyper-aware of their own cleverness — their consciousness of having read all the books — in juxtaposition to his own earthier mescaline-paved path to enlightenment.

I remember a party in Uni in the depths of winter 2004 in a ratty basement off the Cowley Road. People were huddled outside the back door, smoking and stamping their feet, shouting, arguing, roaring with laughter. When I asked what had happened, it turned out that someone’s new boyfriend had committed a massive social transgression.

“He corrected Tim’s grammar. We threw him out”.