Ask Dynamical Systems Questions, Get Dynamical Systems Answers

This is a joke on “ask stupid questions, get stupid answers.”

Let’s suppose you check your blood pressure and then ask GPT and it says it’s quite high and you should probably go to an ER to see how serious it actually is.

You go, you hang out for four hours, they do an EEG on your chest, they take your blood, they put you on medication, maybe give you some Potassium after learning yours is low which affects heart health.

They do not think you are in imminent danger of a heart attack or stroke, and so they send you on your merry way to follow up with your primary care doctor (which lol you do not have).

You ask them their recommendations. Do you take this medicine for longer that they gave you? Do you take a different medicine? Do you keep taking potassium?

They say they don’t really know.

You mention that you take some uppers. You drink coffee every day and you smoke and you are on ADHD meds — all of which are known to increase heart rate and then, blood pressure.

You ask for guidance around which intervention to do.

They say they are not sure. Yes — the coffee and the smoking and the ADHD meds are not helping the blood pressure situation — but ostensibly you are smoking because you are addicted, ostensibly you are on the ADHD meds for a reason, and coffee is common enough that if you really like it or need it for work or addicted to it also then singling it out as the culprit also would not make sense if you can cut out one of the other ones —

and so they say to just keep measuring your blood pressure and check with your primary care doctor.

But so here’s the thing — ask dynamical systems questions, get dynamical systems answers.

Sometimes there will be a clear-seeming answer inside of the dynamical systems answer — YES this specific thing is the highest leverage point — this is the thing you should edit.

If you are getting a lot of UTIs for example, just take cranberry. Just do it. Any form. Real cranberries, cranberry juice, cranberry powder, cranberry gummies. It does not matter. Just do it. Yes you can try things like showering more or whatever but by far the biggest thing is just eat some cranberry. It doesn’t have to even be every day. It can just be multiple times a week at literally random times. If you go to the doctor they will mention the cranberry thing.

The cranberry is a leverage point in the confusing dynamical system around whatever causes UTIs. Oh you go to parties a lot. Oh you travel a lot. Oh you don’t drink enough water. Yeah maybe but literally if you do something cranberry related, the difference between your cranberry life versus your not cranberry life will be night and day.

Now, if somebody came to me with a UTI dynamical system question, I would have a cranberry answer.

Something like this is what many people end up hoping for, because it is awesome. It is really awesome when this happens.

“Ah yes you have this really complicated problem but there is this very clear thing that doesn’t unbalance the whole system and just makes things better.”

Usually though when somebody has a dynamical systems question, if they go to a smart person about it, the smart person will ask about the components of the dynamical system, with variable degrees of thoroughness, patience, and time invested. Then they might find a leverage point, or a way to escape the traps in the system, or an answer like “if you increase this thing this other thing will decrease and everything will be way more balanced.” More likely than not though they will parrot back elements of the system that are confusing.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to be helpful, or will not be helpful, or are telling you things you already know. It usually means you either have to find in yourself the specific question you really had, or spend more time talking to them.

But don’t just give up when this happens.