2/28/2007

beauty is not self-assessable

funny how the weekend is my one chance to catch up on sleep. and in the past i took advantage of that, in high school. now i think i deprive myself of sleep even more during the weekend than the weekdays.

for the moment.

people are far too polite, sometimes. i would much prefer to be told that i am terrible at something rather than being allowed to continue thinking that i am okay at it. especially if i consider the person telling me to an authority figure on the matter, which is just to say, when my math professors tell me im not good at math, ill take it more seriously than when my friends tell me.

i see two clear (immediately apparent) explanations to timidness. the timid person may be afraid of getting hurt by people. and the timid person may be afraid of hurting people. they say a lot of people drink too much water. well i assure you, not me. its pretty difficult to drink 'too much' water when you drink as much urine as i do. we all think way too much. when i knock on a door, i do it somewhat softly, as to not disturb people. but thats the whole fucking point of knocking on a door. im listening to loud music, a loud knock will not disturb me. oh shit, im seriously forgetting what im thinking about just seconds after i think it. constantly. this is a problem.

i fought the angels here today.

hmmm, stefan said, " 'nothing shows true fortitude of character quite like learning to live with a bad decision.' <--I love that quote" and it makes me think about how i generally dont make too many bad decisions. leading me to believe i probably dont have much fortitude of character. actually, if i dont make bad decisions, it has to be at least in part to my lack of decision making in general. i just dont make many decisions.

"studies show that joining an angry mob is a great way for teens to avoid getting caught up in a gang."

i had a bottle cap once that said, "your luck will completely change today." it made me real worried, caues in general things go pretty well for me, which could be interpreted as 'good luck'. in which case the softdrink manufacturers were informing me that bad things were to begin happening! what i need is a partner in crime. someone to help me make bad decisions. an accomplice. what i need is a girlfriend.

dont let me take an inch, ill think you gave me a mile.

oh man, lately i havent been paying attention too well, but i just wrote some song lyrics without paying attention to it, it was weird. i was actively thinking about something else, but i still wrote what i wanted to. a lot of weird things are happening in my head lately. this morning i went to email my resume to a friend at smiths medical, and i found my resume on my computer, switched to the browser to open a tab for gmail, and then i forgot why i opened the tab. and then tonight i made some microwave food, and i forgot that i made it, so when i walked into the kitchen and smelled it, i was like... oh yeah, food! even though it only takes two minutes to cook. once i hid the browser to do something else, i saw the resume folder again and was like, oh yeah, email resume! then i almost forgot that i had forgotten in the first place. its like im in a dream or something.

get me angry, ill go further.

im trying to quit the factoring problem. its just a wise move. im also hoping to make unwise decisions. i didnt make a lot of mistakes as a teenager, when you get all those chances to blame it on your youth. now ill have to blame it on my curiosity, maybe i can blame it on something else abstract. ill blame my experience. ill blame my good looks. ill blame my amoral outlook. blame clinton. blame bush. ill blame society. ill blame you. whoever you are. ill blame parents or upbrining, molestation or drugs or lack thereof. just pick something. to be honest, i want to make bad decisions. itd be a nice change of pace. a worthwhile experience. itll build character. like datura. to quote mr Carey, "that which makes me stronger, may fuck me up real bad."

from now on, when people say to me, "im not a math person", i will respond with, "well, i think there is a medication for that now. you should ask your doctor about it."


for some reason i feel like there is something much more important to say, or describe, or explore, in my mind. i should be studying for number theory, or reading for history, or working on electricity and magnetism problems, but i wouldnt normally anyway, so i need to stop thinking thats a serious problem. but what could be really more important to express? to explore? to describe? i dont know. it eludes me. im not used to that i dont think, being eluded from. but it seems more and more common lately.


how do you define worst?

2/26/2007

this is me standing out

i have a very difficult time suspending disbelief.

last night i learned that ethanol and logic do not mix. i think maybe logic is hydrophilic. which is interesting because ethanol apparently can dissolve both hydrophobic and hydrophilic substances. therefore, logic is neither hydrophobic nor hydrophilic?

youve gone away enough, when will you decide to stay?



i am told that i am not certain of anything, which is true in the rigid scientific/philosophical sense. disregarding that i feel that i am as certain of many, perhaps more things, and perhaps more certain of those things, than the average human being. in physics we deal with many absolutes, and we value them with far more certainty than the average human should grant to most aspects of their life. mathematics is an even more severe case, in which case the word 'certain' is finally used correctly; proofs are proofs, and nothing can change them.

what sort of things am i certain about? f=ma? 2nd law of thermo? GR (within some degree)? QM? axiomatized mathematics systems?
i am not sure. but i am certain that it does not matter. not to me personally, not to other people, not to the universe or any system of measurement between. of course there are always the trivial things, like gender, existence, or virtually any word/concept/noun in which a common definition has been agreed upon.



some time ago i tried to define love, and if i remember right, i got sidetracked or caught up in a detail or confused by an apparent flaw or contradiction. in any case, i recall being dissatisfied, and also discouraged in the definition i provided. i had mentioned how years ago i asked lindsey what romance was, and much thought lead to my eventual arrival at the definition of 'love expressed'. and yet that only left a hole for the definition of love.
and so on the drive back to keene today, i came up with something, sufficiently short to avoid confusion, simple words to avoid displacing the task of defining (again), precise, powerful. at first i wrote the word 'deep' in place of 'great', but i think great is much better (as in grand, special, important, held highly, broad...)

love: a great appreciation for.
romance: love, expressed.

funny that i once said i wanted to fall madly in love, without having a clear idea in my head of what that meant.
or maybe that is a lie. maybe i did have a clear idea in my head, in spite of the ambiguity of the concept.

2/25/2007

time to evolve

look up, look up. find what you need.
all things grow. all things grow.
"this is easy, like drowning someone"


i dont want to understand people. i dont want to understand myself. i dont know why i ever thought that to be a good idea.


save yourself the embarrassment.
cause im a, big shot.

2/23/2007

a positive handicap

reduced to an absurdity. risk being completely cut open.

it is bizarre how reluctant i am to do certain things, when the results of those things are usually sufficiently pleasing that after i have done them i am happy. for instance, i just washed a few dishes, and cleaned up a tiny bit in the kitchen, and it was very satisfying. but i didnt do it out of the knowledge that i would be satisfied after, i did it because i felt i had put it off for far too long.

pleasure meeting you.

the outcome doesnt matter anyway. its having fun with the process.
there was jade, she told me not to get caught up in things too small.

burlap sack.

this is me coherent. the crucial step of course is to apply copious amounts of butter while the bagel is still in fact warm enough to melt it all. this can be determined from simple first principle calculations, or by doing it immediately after the bagel is removed from the toaster oven.

what is fundamentally different about subatomic phenomena that cannot be represented in the macroscopic world? why can we not mimic the effects of qubit superpositioning by allowing a continuous range of voltages in a computer, rather than the discrete voltages we currently use?

'to be destroyed'
when the blood has dried, i have not followed procedure.

dont lick your knives in the dark. someone asked me, what does that mean?

copious amounts of butter. excessive even.

i suspect that my less than common knowledge can be attributed to the frequency with which i believe the mundane to be profound. that is, i am easily entertained.

inspire in her, a desire to know.

2/20/2007

i was afraid for you

forever inaccessible. both profound and silly. dont be afraid dont be afraid dont be afraid. dont fear death, its happens to everyone. dont fear everyone, theyre barely any different then you. dont fear life, its pretty much everything. and anything else that people fear, is unneeded. today ive begun saying the little things people enjoy. hey, that grandfather clock is not running. nice hearts on your window there. modest hopes. i think im living in a sunset. she hung up just one second too late. but one second too soon sounds better. follow the porn.

i need something to fill my mind. thats how it works, it doesnt have to be anything in particular. certain things certainly work better than others, but that doesnt matter. it does not matter what it is, as long as it works. problems work. physics work. mathematics work. science works. people work. i have plenty of options, i just chose one.
my strongest skills are probably patience and persistence.
Bacon said something about men noticing when things hit, but not taking note when they miss, and i believe the statement was referring to our ability to read into things. ive known, and understood this for a very long time, at least since high school. but suddenly i realize, the process of taking note when it works and not when it doesnt, its a filtering process. we cannot remember every number we see, but we can remember the ones that have apparent significance.

ive been having out of mind experiences lately.

so a young boy, who lives in the woods, reads book after book about airplanes. but none ever fly overhead, and the books have no pictures, and he has never been out of the woods. but the descriptions in the book, they inspire images in the mind; the boy dreams up airfoils and ailerons, cockpits and landing-gear, pitch yaw and roll. but he never once sets eyes on an airplane. then one day, he ventures out of the forrest. or maybe hes forced. maybe his home gets harvested. he discovers the world. and he discovers that no matter how well he thought he understood airplanes, he had absolutely no idea what they were really about. this story went to shit somewhere. i feel like communication and people might be my airplane.

i have a lot of the 'help you move body(s)' type friends.

i guess seth lloyd said, "the proof is in eating the pudding". we are not dealing with armchair skeptics here.
once people like you, i dont think theyll ever not like you. they might hate you, but theyll still like you. that sounds stupid, but its true. "too hot for radio." what sort of things do i find funny? just smile. for no particular reason. grin. --i want to say 'splendid' more often'-- i wish to encourage a free, open society. in which participation is mandatory! no, i am kidding. that wouldnt make any sense of course. it seemed like it took just a few seconds; and forever.

i think the concepts of there being a 'right' and a 'wrong' cause a lot more problems than it solves. people seem to think that having a right and a wrong in life give them direction, as if they have something to fight against, or fight for, something to regret, or take pride in. something to fear something to love.

is it 'safe' to say that religion is a very weak form of mysticism, or do i need to find something slightly more general than mysticism, that contains both beliefs. maybe i should just say i reject un-justified beliefs of all kinds. "The workings of the mind are not witnessable by other observers; its career is private." i like the phrasing, although i disagree.

lie to others. dont lie to yourself. and i need you to know how sorry i am. which is why for me, i know ill never be redeemed.

i think my ability to comprehend people has either decreased in the last several months, or my awareness of my inability to comprehend people has increased, i cant tell which.

wait, weird. i can still think about complex topics, consider complex ideas. but i seem to have an increasing awareness of my inability to read what ive written, or other people tell me. maybe its only at times, hard to say. like bacon wrote, we notice the hits, we forget the misses. basically, i seem to read, or listen to someone, for just a moment, before my mind wanders from whatever i was reading (or someone was saying) to focus on the fact that i have no idea what is being 'said' (or written). from that point on i struggle to not think about the fact that im not paying attention, and try to start reading/listening again. but it doesnt work. it doesnt work.

im not prepared to believe i did so well.

the motivation for the thinking that follows, was hearing a lot of good music ____ (insert good word for 'coming out of') mr bryant naro's room, and thinking, is it reasonable to believe that someday, my computer could 'know' me (not in the biblical sense) well enough to play new music it knows i have not heard before, but which has a high probability of being liked by me? in other words, could my computer reliably pick music i like? i know there are a number of methods of doing that now, but none would compare to a sufficiently developed AI, i dont believe. one that could begin to 'listen' to the music itself, and find out what it is about one song to the next that makes me enjoy it or not. anyway, following those thoughts were these:
so this is kind of fun to think about: AI scientists are hard at work trying to make computers think like humans. or maybe even more so, computers that are indistinguisable from humans (at least from a remote sense; see turing AI test). so in the dichotomy between rigid logical thought, and nebulous emotional thought (note, not logical does not imply necessarily illogical, in this sense it is used to mean thought based on feelings rather than logic/rational, and although rational reasoning can lead to justification of feelings, feelings should never be a consequence of logic, they should be a consequence of feeling.) back to the dichotomy, the rational/logical side is working fervently to replace itself. but no such event will take place in the emotional thought side, as there is no reason to ever create AI to replace our feelings. in fact, feelings are an inherently internal aspect, as where logic and reason is an inherently external aspect.
all benefit from logical thought (or may). emotional thought is much more self-centered (not in a negative way.)
intuitive vs rational sounds very good, but misses a point somehow.
between intuitive and rational thought, rational thought is working very hard to automate itself with machines.
at first i thought inuitive vs rational sounded good, but now i see the flaw. you can have intuition about rational thought. feeling tends to seem intuitive, but its more that it is natural.

does dignity come from some other word? seems like it should.

assuming someone actually reads to this point, im sorry that these posts have become so long and degenerate. although i dont have any valid reason to apologize for something i write without intent and you read without obligation.

i was afraid for you. the graves are not yet full.

and i will always remain these things.

2/16/2007

fearsome though we are, lets enjoy.

defect from society. happy you near. laughter is simply sharp repeated breathes. touch is having or getting zero distance. angels there attend. dont mistake kindness for weakness. i concern myself with all the wrong things. all the wrong order. i am working hard to get the background color right, when i havent even started researching for the presentation. story of my life.

i recently stumbled across notes i wrote while trying to figure out how to solve a rubik's cube for the first time: "rubik's cubes are like girls, its possible i will never figure either one out." well, i figured out the cube long before the girl. "solving a rubik's cube should be a matter of messing it up in reverse." clearly i didnt understand entropy yet. "in order to solve a cube, i must think like a cube!" i really want to remember to say this next time someone asks me about it. this is also written on the sheets: "pardon me, you with the severe aesthetic deficiency. (hey ugly)"

holy shit, currently, china is planning to build a large coal fired power plant, every week, for the next seven years. my take on global warming can be summed up with the age old adage, "better safe than sorry". and as an extremely prosperous society, it just seems like the answer should be, why not make an effort to correct it? strange how people can be so engulfed by products of the scientific community, yet so skeptical of scientific opinion. so while lasers play your music and movies, and satellites give you days advance in weather warnings for snowstorms and hurricanes, people still doubt evolution and global warming. to be fair, its easier to doubt these things since all scientific matters are filtered through politics and media before being received by the general public, and so they can doubt the information based on those things. but stop it. just stop. please. stop it. now. so i want my next car to be a flexible fuel car.

a motivating factor for me to keep my room clean: have chuck and stacy over. have drinks, play games, hang out. stacy doesnt like sci-fi. chuck plays guitar.

decimate is a neat word. behavior modification. when something goes wrong. its easy to impress when nothing is expected. vanishing. the monsters behind the door. decorate decorate! kill pain. induce joy. like an opiate for your heart. better to endure pain than to become bound to the drug. ha, in school they never tell you that columbus was sent to find india to retrieve opium as well as other things. humans are great. morphine was invented to cure alcohol. heroin was invented to cure morphine. death was invented to cure heroin (?). an illness was either amputated, or medicated. a good doctor was a fast doctor. fear overcomes tolerance. lets enjoy.

its not easy to squeeze a trigger when you are wearing mittens. fearsome though we are. my only marketable skill is to occupy space. its a light your after cause light moves faster.

a lot of people say im smart, and i know why. its because i know a little bit about a lot of things that not many people know about. but ive never liked being called smart, so ive reached the conclusion that 'smart' should really mean, 'one who learns from their mistakes'. in which case, there is no indication that i am any smarter than anyone else. which is perfectly fine. we are all good at some things and terrible at others. its lucky when you really enjoy what you are good at for a long time, but if you dont, choose what you enjoy over what you are good at. its better to be happy than productive. the world is productive enough to let us be unconcerned with productivity, though few people see this.

yeah, it might be nice to have a consistently poor memory. but you live your life with what you have, and i happen to have a memory that works great at some times, and terribly at others, independent of my personal desires.

Louis C.K. talks about the phrase "suck a bag a dicks", and it is great. i find it entertaining.

ive noticed the conflict between the rational mind and the emotional mind is more prevalent when you think with one of them too consistently. on occasion, i experience a mental overdose.

i like new things. people usually think i am thinking. they ask me all the time, "what are you thinking about?" and i say, nothing. so they ask again, because they dont believe me. when i walk, i never look more than a few feet in front of me. people tend to assume that means i am either depressed, or consumed in thought, which on occasion might be true. but i think im just usually watching where i am going, carefully choosing where i plant each step. although this is all true and accurate, it also makes a great metaphor for my life. too meticulous. too premeditated. and possibly too unconcerned with even my short term future. but whatever, fuck that. there is no such thing as right and wrong, you live your life in a way you enjoy, and there wont be anything more to demand.

i could not decide what to title this. i really love the phrases: "angels there attend", "fearsome though we are" and "lets enjoy".

let us compete for criminal boldness.

2/13/2007

i need a flame for my fuel.

lojack the baby.
the height of irresponsibility.
today is an exception.
hes just dead upset.
whats your drug of choice?
not mad enough to be committed, not sane enough to be normal.
i have messages from deep space.
demand my entertainment, please.
if i said you were beautiful, would you take off your clothes and dance around a bit?
the cutting edge. why? because the non-cutting edge is not so useful.
your guts are like mine.
it just goes to show you that your mind is your own monster.
this originates from the heart!
re-minds you of them. him of her. he of she.
i fear that i may be way too rational to really experience romantic love.
could you just give a twirl, as they say.
sleep only when tired.
at this point, my problem is at least inclusive with not knowing what my problem is.

physics is all about problem solving. complexity theory is all about analyzing problems, determining the resources and number of steps a problem takes to be solved, the scalability of the problem, and so on. it seems like the two studies go hand in hand.

its funny, a number of times throughout my life, an attractive girl has told me, "damn, you clean up nice!". what they have all failed to realize is, generally, i dont clean up! im a dirty person, i dont give a shit!

have i posted this before? how cold would you have to make a single ice cube to freeze an entire glass of water when placed in it. assume the ice cube is 3*3*4 cm, and the water is at 20°C initially, and its... i dont know, one pint, which is apparently just over 550 mL, so lets go with 550 mL. is it even possible? i dont feel like doing it. if it is possible, we ought to do it, cause thatd be fun.

what kind of result would you get, if you took multiple source images, say, many videos of the same scene, but with different angles for polarizing filters, and you had the computer pick the pixels that were darkest and combine them together?

i need to learn how to listen and provoke responses more often.

tom: you told the authorities, "dont let me out, i cant cope with the outside world." Do you have a recollection of that? and do you...
charles: youre making a desperate plea out of something, man. theres no desperate plea out of it. i said i cant handle the maniacs outside, let me back in.
tom: i didnt use the word desperate, thats your word charles.
charles: yeah, well, your inflection and your voice tones were, uh, implications there.
tom: well, uh, you use the word maniacs on the outside. how are you different from the maniacs on the outside, and why do you call them maniacs? because you know something? they think youre one.
charles: yeah, it would reflect. if you hold a negative up to the light, you dont see the light you just see the negative. so im a reflection of your negative, theres no doubt about that and i can handle that also, i been handling it aint i?


sometimes someone might say, "well, thats not healthy behavior". yeah? well what is healthy behavior? the common sense definition defined by the same people who think TV and a 60 hour a week job you hate are healthy? the people who think that pop culture is acceptable? NOTHING is healthy behavior, so fuck that line of reasoning.

what is all this? what sort of problems have we created? weve mucked it up good. this idea of control and responsibility, development, right and wrong... these are all very complex issues.

we get stressed about the dumbest things. its very unnatural. get stressed if you see a lion or bear that could attack you. get stressed if you havent eaten in a few days and you arent sure when or how your next meal will come about. get stressed when someone you care about is in one of these situations again.

if we are going to apply the theories of computability, computational complexity, or mathematics in general, to solve human problems, we need to first determine, what are the most severe problems in the world? and so i am taking a poll: what do you (the reader) believe are the most important problems facing humankind?

i just realized, i hate the idea of being called special, in the sense that parents say their babies are special. im okay with someone saying, i am special, with respect to them. that they enjoy me. i believe we need to express ourselves in more relative terms, rather than absolute terms. people tend to say things like, this is the best thing ever, or that sort of thing. instead, say, this is really cool. i like it a lot.

i slow down, and slow down, and slow down, and it gets to the point when im just not moving at all... and it can be a bit embarrassing. ...and im just stuck there, not moving. i resent it deeply. i think, my life, needs to change. dramatically.

it is such a challenge, to try to impart knowledge on children in a way in which they will be able to take care of themselves., but not in any way which leads to biases that hurt others. how is it that we can be sure the knowledge we are trying to pass on is not biased? how does one know that they have biases? i suppose i could ask. so, to everyone, if i appear to have biases, please inform me. i might be aware of some, maybe not, im not sure.

i am perverted. hopefully. being normal, fuck that. no one even knows what normal is. so fuck anyone who claims to. i want to experience addiction. full fledged, physical addiction, does anyone have any advice? i want to feel the cold sweat shaking withdrawls of... anything.

i just wrote ethanold by accident. and it makes me think of a persons name... im not sure why. the secret service asked me to close my window.

i believe you, whatever you say, because i trust you. but dont lead me astray, dont let me believe something is true just because you think id want it to be true.

something seems missing.

history repeats itself. even in paradise.

2/08/2007

it is that sort of supreme beauty that makes you feel special just for witnessing it.

dont listen to your common sense.

about P vs NP, Aaronson says, "We have a pretty sophisticated idea of why we have no idea". Chazelle says, "To say that we're nowhere near resolving P vs NP is a safe prophecy," and "The truth is, no one has a clue". ha ha ha, about NP-complete problems, "Always basking in the spotlight, they are famously difficult, impossibly hard to satisfy, and—if their resilience is any guide—quite pleased with the attention." -Bernard Chazelle. -ive been hearing (reading) this a lot lately, and it interests me. because it is such an important question, and so famous, and so widely talked about, so widely studied, if no one has a clue, it makes it an attractive problem. any amount of creativity seems an advantage in such a situation, i feel at least mildly creative, so i feel at least mildly motivated.

probabilistically checkable proofs? zero-knowledge proofs? automated theorem checking? how about theorem finding? do we know if P vs NP is an NP problem? so if no one has a clue how to go about proving P vs NP why is that? what is proving something? its just taking one thing you know and transforming it into another thing you know. or taking one thing you know and transforming it into something you know isnt something else. could genetic algorithms make any progress? could they perhaps be used to discover new techniques to be used in proofs? that sounds like quite a challenge to be honest, but i know little about these things.

i love these terms Nicholas Gurewitch uses: 'perfectly strange' and 'score another point for whimsy'

the only real problems are things we call problems. the signifier is not the signified.
oh shit thats terrible: "im putting the 'sensual' back in 'nonconsensual' ". "spontaneous camping".
"we'll never make it out of here alive." they didnt figure that out a long time ago? i think i knew that by age eleven. its actually a coherent definition for 'life'. nothing living here (this place called reality) can leave alive; it just isnt allowed.
crime is not breaking the law but getting caught. ha, even in high level math my intuition is misleading. if my intuition isnt right in complicated math, or physics, and it certainly isnt right with people, then what good is it? sneaky trick from math department: "it has to do with a crazy function" -dr Wolf. and holy crap he wasnt kidding! the Dirac delta function, very peculiar, i must learn more.

etablish your status. mental coup d'éta.

we take our pillow fighting seriously. defecting from the human species. crime organized. once upon a time, we had secrets. censored - seems the best parts always missing. "used to always _______". she walked so fast, and then I heard the siren, the deafening howl that told us that the end of the world was due in a few hours. we all stopped.

i want to write incomplete sentences. or should that read: i want to write incomplete. but no one ever writes sentences with ends but no beginnings, its always beginnings with no ends. maybe its harder to do the opposite. or maybe its easier to cut yourself off. its easier to start a thought and not finish it. its easier to speak an idea and trail off. want to write incomplete sentences. to write incomplete sentences. write incomplete sentences. incomplete sentences. "hey, sentence fragment is a sentence fragment!"

dont listen to your common sense.

"Thus certain bombs were designed to destroy an entire large city even if dropped five to ten kilometers from its centre." what drugs were we doing? LEADERS OF THE MOST ADVANCED NATIONS ON EARTH OKAYED THESE THINGS. WERE THEY FUCKING INSANE? 4.5 billion years of being programmed to fight for our survival, and now we dont have to. after a few hundred years of rapid technological development, and societal changes, we no longer have to (practically). isnt anyone considering these things? they seem vastly important, influential to our personal lives. we have all these personal conflicts and mental problems, and no one knows why. maybe its something simple, something stupid. maybe we ought to be breaking things. maybe we ought to destroy something.

i like these things. i ought to work more on them more often.

i am beginning to obsess over P vs NP. i think about it as i fall asleep. im not intelligent, merely knowledgeable. it concerns me because its further from physics than i have strayed in a long time. i think im still more interested in quantum computing, but i dont know, computing in general is becoming a very interesting subject, undoubtedly something i would need a good grasp of if researching quantum computing specifically, but dammit im rambling. ill figure it out, no worries.

watching the world rotate.

my mom asked if i believed in love, and i changed the subject. its not that i dont believe in love, i just dont believe in it the way she means. do i believe that animals evolved in such a way that intelligence eventually became a more valuable trait then physical adaptation? yes. its the difference between a machine physically built to complete a given task, and a computer programmed to complete a task. the latter can be adapted to do other things. do i think that the necessity of 'programming' these more intelligent creatures necessitated increased time and concern for them? yes. children need a lot of guidance and parenting (programming) to know how to eat, behave, cooperate, build, survive. do i believe that this increased importance of training their young leads to an importance on the parents ability to stay together, and care for their young? yes. it seems clear that society is integral to human survival. do i think that all of these evolutionary consequences could be grouped together and called love? pretty much. i know that that kills the idea. girls dont want you to ask if you can kiss them, they want to be kissed. but thats not love, thats romance. thats knowing what to do and doing it. its being natural, and if theres one thing i dont 'feel', its natural. by the way, i use the word 'believe' in the sense that these events, such as evolution and the causes and effects involved in these events, they seem reasonable to me. i accept them as plausible.

so what do i think about love? i think that people can care for each other, and enjoy one anothers company, mentally or physically, (or maybe some other way i havent thought about?), and i think thats all that matters. and if you want i will call that love. i dont think anything else is needed for these concepts.

the reason my mom asked was because i told her i was a strict physicalist, and that i believe all the mental is merely an illusion resulting from the physical reality underneath it. but i dont mean to imply by 'illusion' that mental reality isnt 'real'. im here, i dont want to die. im having fun, mostly. i enjoy life, regardless of what i believe (read: find plausible) the underlying causes of my consciousness (for that matter, my existence) are. whether you are a physicalist, a dualist or a spiritualist, the results are the same: we are alive, we are in these bodies for a relatively brief period of time, there is nothing we can do to change those facts; we ought to try to enjoy it.


i should start including disclaimers on everything i write. ill need to consult my council first...

2/06/2007

to call it hypnotic would just be silly. mesmerizing fits better.

"we have a pretty sophisticated idea of why we have no idea." -Scott Aaronson

wordache. girlache. friendache. happyache. sadache = ache? mathache? drugache. skyache. dreamache? this might be interesting. workache? could be useful. most of these suck really, i just cant admit it. butterache. fruitache. songache.

"yours truly, angry mob." she told me. she said she didnt catch the band name. turns out that is an up coming album by kaiser chiefs.

so anthropic computing: guess a solution and test it. if your guess is not a solution, then kill yourself (this is assuming the everett many worlds hypothesis is true; also, do not apply it to any problem which may have no solutions).

high tech math; serious errors; do more preliminary thinking.

the funny thing about not knowing something is that, you dont know it. you dont get to know you dont know it. until someone tells you what you dont know, or you discover it for yourself, at which point, you no longer dont know it.
maybe this should be written, the unfortunate thing about not knowing something... etc. what if i am so naive with respect to something that i am clueless as to how clueless i am? contrary to Scott's claim, what if i have no idea why i have no idea? what if i have no idea that i even have no idea? in the dark about being in the dark? too much introspection. too much self-reference. too much too much, you took too much.

in science we attempt to take the least assumptive position available. this does not work well when interacting with people.

massive amounts of no fun.
dont avoid what is easy.
they emergeed from within it.
when you speak, they listen.
i respond well to honesty.
we both reach the same conclusions.
thats me.
hide with me under the covers.
im looking for a place to get lost.
i think my body was built for eating butter. (although my parents might claim otherwise)

people tell me sometimes, i ought to do something productive, or constructive. and suddenly i call that into question. the world produces awfully efficiently. maybe i should do something counterproductive. i dont particularly like the direction in which the world is producing, so counterproductive seems like a good fit.

so do this: take your monitor and put something white on it. like a big empty text document. then look at the reflection of the white part off the surface of a carbonated beverage, such as coke. when the bubbles pop, the rings blink by! it looks excellent. and i should go to bed. these are the things i enjoy.

but first, remember this: in the classical restraunt, you can order salad or steak. in the quantum restraunt, you can order steak, salad, or something that is mixed, with some probability of becoming salad when you eat, and some complimentary probability of becoming steak when you eat.

hey, also, with respect to the utility of things that we do, some are purely for happiness. painting a picture, reading a book, listening to an album or watching a movie. shouldnt all things we do be reducible to increasing happiness? shouldnt we only work with the goal of increasing our happiness somehow? if you would be happier in a shitty ten hour a week job, and sacrificing the things that require money, should you do it? thats about where i am at the moment. maybe im just justifying things. that and my world is a little screwy, i cant be a pirate for ever.

today, of the problem set, Dave said, "this wasnt any fun at all." so i said, "not even in retrospect?". then Matt said he works best in the a.m., so i said, thats the a.m. that follows the p.m., not the one that precedes it. you gotta specify.

ampersand ampersand ampersand ampersand.
unless unless unless.
perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps.

i need to remember to tell Matt and Everett about my straight line joke (im gonna fight the circle guy).

2/04/2007

it was needed to give life to things.

today we only whisper.
tomorrow we only scream.
i dont want anything to ever be okay ever again.
add ache to various words.

lately ive felt like i must look paranoid. as if im always looking around at everyone as if they are suspicious. im not sure if other people see me that way, or if thats just how i think i look. also, when i checked the phone for change on my way into my apartment the other day, i felt as if i appeared very obsessive-compulsive, since i do that every time i come in. but i really do it every time because i intentionally made it a habit to do that every time. also, a while back i learned that people get addicted to hot salsa through a similar mechanism as people who are addicted to cocaine, sex, or maybe even exercising; it had something to do with endorphines, which more correctly are endomorphines, or endogenous opiates. regardless, i conciously made the decision to increase my tolerance for spicy foods, and now, five months later i eat only hot salsa and the 'extra hot' sausage from hannafords. now my question is, can you intentionally make yourself addicted to something? having set out the goal of becoming addicted and tolerant to spicy foods, does it still qualify as an addiction? i suppose one thing to try is to quit eating these foods, switch back to mild or something, and see if i crave the hotter ones. i suppose that is what i will try, and we will find out. somehow i cant imagine it being all that physically addictive. if it isnt, ill try meth-amphetamines to see if those will work.

The amino acid residue sequence (primary structure) of β-endorphin is: Tyr-Gly-Gly-Phe-Met-Thr-Ser-Glu-Lys-Ser-Gln-Thr-Pro-Leu-Val-Thr-Leu-Phe-Lys-Asn-Ala-Ile-Ile-Lys-Asn-Ala-Tyr-Lys-Lys-Gly-GluOH (Fries, 2002).

i know youre only a dream. but i dont care. its nice to see you. even if youre just a dream.
yesterday it began snowing on my walk home.
people like the way i think.
pick a word, and then make a list.
concerns: good question... girls? jobs? im not sure really... money? not really any of these so much.
abilities: analytical, observant, smart, stupid, scientifically and technologically adept.
interests: shit... i need a fucking hobby. other than spinning my car around repeatedly after fresh snow, (which was great last night).
goals: teach other people the novel aspects of life that i have stumbled on; specifically computer science and physics, since those are definitely of broad value, as opposed to personal experiences and lessons.
loathing: traditions? beliefs? religion? people? no, not people. but something about people in general...

okay, so the boy was told he has certain deficits that he will never overcome.
i was told i had no limitations, on anything, ever.
i dont think either method was right in raising a child.
if i ever have kids, i want them to know that they are capable of just about anything. and if they come to something they seem to be lacking, they can work on it, and at least make it better to some degree. maybe they cant become the most sociable person on earth, but they can meet people and get to know them and have healthy relationships with them none-the-less.

"you know, i, i uh, i alphabetize insurance forms 60 hours a week and i was noticing i have a hard time concentrating so they put me on this new medication and i can focus real well. --- YOU SHOULDNT CHANGE THAT, no you shouldnt want to alphabetize insurance forms, that was a good thing that you had not concentrating on that. " –Doug Stanhope

start looking for the emotions behind the statements.
i need to start. start looking for the emotions behind the statements.

for a moment the whole world looks very beautiful. with the lights on the trees under a few inches of snow, and a few inches of bright white snow balanced carefully on every branch. huge flakes falling gently to the ground; to my tongue.

kevin and i built a snowman of magnificent proportions.

i want to talk to stefan and other people about such things as the attitude we take towards personal accomplishments versus work-oriented accomplishments, like i talked with tom the one night. i think those ideas were important.

aggression for the sake of aggression. recklessness for the sake of recklessness.
experts cant converse with novices; its more like a lecture or a lesson.
unconcerned does not equal indecisiveness.
if i seem not to know where im going,
it is because i am not too concerned with where i end up.

years ago, lindsey mentioned romance to me. which prompted me to determine what exactly romance is. after much consideration, the definition i came to was "love expressed". at the time that seemed satisfactory, but now i see that although 'expressed' is well defined, 'love' is not. so now to define love more clearly. in the context of emotions, love is obviously a very powerful emotion. as with all emotions, it is a short cut to reason. as an unreasonably reasonable person, it seems unlikely that i am fully capable of experiencing love. although i guess thats probably not the case. dammit. it could go either way really. once again reason has muddled things up, and i have to just drop the whole idea.

sweet precision.

the way i have cut my hair most recently may look somewhat more typical than normal, but that is okay with me, because i have something others do not! greesyness. yes, due to my socially unacceptably low rate of showering, my hair is in a perpetually dirty state. too many words that end in 'y' in that sentence.

theyre appealing to quiet desperation.

this is an interesting quote, by a child between four and eight years old: "my mommy loves me more than anybody. you dont see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night." i find it interesting because my immediate interpretation of 'mommy loves me more than anybody' is that the child believes he/she is the most loved noun in the mother's world. but then the second sentence implies that the mother is simply the noun from which the child receives the most love from in their [the child's] world.

theres nothing to fix about me because theres nothing wrong with anything i do. and if someone else thinks its wrong, ill be willing to listen to your argument, but you better listen to mine too. most people have ideas of what are right and wrong that are not based on first principles or firsthand experience, but rather on information passed on to them by others.

what are my concerns?

do we actually know for certain that antimatter has normal mass? i highly doubt that anyone has checked its gravitational mass, as i think that would be very difficult to do. but perhaps theyve verified its inertial mass, and its been assumed the two must be that intimate. which gives me an interesting idea... say you did find a type of mass that was repulsive instead of attractive, (gravitationally); would you expect its intertial mass to be 'flipped' as well? would you expect it to behave opposite to centripetal forces? move to the inside of the curve when you sped around a corner? it seems unlikely to even conceive of. perhaps there is some insight in all that thinking that might reveal why there is no 'repulsive mass'.

"are you to be trusted?" "--of course not."

have paper and pencil by your side because there are going to be gaps; details you are going to have to fill out. you are going to have to figure out. and the gap between them would be the remainder.

empty tuple

so i figured out last night that parametrically defined fourier series will work if i want to construct my name with a single (relatively) simple equation: if you scroll down past all the intimdating but not too bad mathematics, there is a graph of a box, made from the X[t_] and Y[t_] equations. the next step is to extend it to my entire name!

goodnight for now.

2/02/2007

i know you are only a dream, but i dont care. its nice to see you . even if you are just a dream.

i want to whisper more often.



"some users may not remember this part of the experience after regaining consciousness, in the same way that a person may forget a dream. the 're-integration' process is slow, and the user gradually becomes aware of surroundings. at first, users may not remember their own names, or even know that they are human, or what that means. movement is extremely difficult, and a user may not be aware that he or she has a body at all."

i would think it would be better to rate things in terms of how strongly they manifest themselves, rather than as a yes or no boolean-typed function. in that respect, i would estimate i have little depressive tendency, since my downs tend to be centered around an embarrassment for humanity, rather than a personal low feeling, i think. and another thing, i think when i get very depressed about the state of the world, i get slightly encouraged to try to change it. even though it seems completely hopeless, i start to feel that it is my responsibility, as someone who sees these wrongs to try to right them. even though i have done very little in the way of righting wrongs. i think of Bertrand Russell's motivation, "[t]hree passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair."

it has been called by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, "the longest and most charming love letter in literature."

a message incoherent.
a message coherent.
my enemies, they watch me from a distance.
shhhh! dont tell anyone.
i become overwhelmed.
the intimacy of the situation
nobody gets to come
lets stop selling violence and start selling sex.
sometimes your voice is not enough
i want to scream more often. at all.
its just not possible.
throw away your money.
give away your love.
been thoroughly condemned by the whole society.
you would be fantastic.
if i spoke every time i saw something beautiful i would be out of breath.
she always left late because she couldnt stand to miss the end. now she always leaves early; she cant stand to hear the goodbyes. this is human and i am not.
this is the drug that lets me dream in my sleep.
speak your mind, dont back down.
id love to fail, but i cant do it intentionally, and it just isnt likely to happen otherwise.
i am addicted to uncomfortable moments.

"wait wait wait, lets try and be scientific about this; one marshmellow at a time." -Dave

you know it doesnt really matter. there arent any rules about that stuff. and even the rules that there are about stuff, those were just made up anyway. the only rules that matter are the ones that you personally believe are good, and the ones that you happen to be breaking when you get caught. there is no real reason to break the first kind, unless you have some serious control problems over yourself. and the second kind, well, dont be too ashamed about breaking them, you dont believe in them anyway. and if you happen to do prison time for them, well, that sucks, but try not to feel down. it is a terrible thing to say you believe in a rule that you do not actually believe in, and to defend it; there is no excuse for the deliberate conscious committing of hypocrisy; it is deception in every sense. although i suppose there could be excuses for deception: protection, safety, self preservation. probably more than i know.

how many people on earth actually understand there is really no such thing as 'good guys' and 'bad guys'; virtually everyone thinks theyre doing the right thing. very few people are amoral or immoral on any regular basis.

me = vacilando. if i were to state my general impression of the meaning of life, it would pretty much be that word. for clarification: i am not claiming the word to be literally applicable to me so much as figuratively. figure that out.

also, i think something i might have written might have seemed humanitarianish. so read this and this.



i want to scream all the time.