4/30/2007

everywhere the same

someday, this will make a funny story.
wo sind mein hosen?
(where are my pants)

to anyone (creationists) who would criticize evolution as 'theory' and not 'fact': Einstein's theory of gravity is just a theory. the fact is, things fall towards the earth, that is the fact part. the best (as of yet) explanation that we have devised is the theory of general relativity, by Einstein. and it does tremendously well at explaining it. its not like a stock broker or a psychic or a doctor's prognosis or really anything youve ever encountered; and regardless of whether we find a more successful theory then general relativity or not, it will remain a very accurate and powerful predictor and explainer for phenomena we observe in nature. likewise, the existence of a large diverse group of organic entities (life) is the fact, while darwinism is the extremely useful, extremely accurate theory.

new field day idea: past tense day!

to anyone who would criticize evolution as unobserved: well, there are lot of physical theories which we have not observed, and observation itself is a tricky phenomena to explain, but that might be a bit too complex for this discussion. so let us stick to physical theories that seem reasonable but remain unobserved. we have never observed an extinction level event type asteroid impact on earth, but we tend to think such events have occurred repeatedly, and will most likely occur in the future. the evidence is again indirect: we find craters, we find iridium spread evenly all over the world at very specific time periods (iridium is rare on earth, but common in asteroids). similarly, we havent observed evolution, but we have found enormous genetic evidence to support it. tectonic plates was going to be my other example... it seems quite likely that the continents are moving apart from one another, however we just havent been around long enough to really see these things. im sort of ranting so ill stop here.

she was smiling a lot. it made me happy.

im fed up with holier-than-thou hypocrites. there shouldnt be a single person on earth who should respect these people until they fucking admit their problems are not so severe, and stop fucking up the world by condeming others.
mark foley fought against child abuse and child exploitation, turned out to be having sex with minors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley
ted haggard condemned homosexuality, turned out to be gay (despite what he has since convinced himself): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Haggard
rush limaugh was highly critical of drug users, advocating strict legal punishments, turned out to be addicted to prescription drugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh
kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself.

caution is needed when consulting the literature.

ah ha! and now i see it! there is a tremendous difference between not being able to focus, and not being interested in focusing. right now, i have to write a paper for number theory, and i am finding it quite easy to distract myself. but i am able to focus, definitely, im just not interested in doing so. there have been times, on occasion, throughout my life, in which i was not able to focus. there were just too many thoughts that would barge in and take over my mind before i could get into any of the work i had to do. those times havent been too often. nearly always they are the direct result of relationships with girls.

debauch you. debauchery

i still dont really know how to interface with other humans (as exemplified by the fact that i use the word 'interface').

so what if im mentally handicap!? fuck you! okay?

are you yet convinced of my concern?
i think the difference between me and severely autistic people is that my habits and understanding of the world are not so radically different from what other people think that no one noticed me not being them.

you surprised me plenty. i dont know which moments are the strangest, but the elements of history were definitely made. thank you for every heart shape i received.

wait wait wait, that idea i had, to buy foreign militaries. thats stupid. heres why... we spend much more money on our military than anyone. like, about ten times more than the next highest, i think. it would be cheaper if we simply had no military at all. and anyone who attempted to invade us, we could buy. we could then pay them more than their homeland pays them, to protect us. we could literally buy any military in the world, and use it to protect us, and save billions of dollars a year.

did you ever figure me out?

i think ive written this in the past, but my great ambition in life, (okay, not really, but one of the things i want to experience before i die), is to slap three people in one swing.

its funny how who says something can influence the way i interpret it. for instance, i saw this quote by vincent van gogh (apparently), "i want to touch people with my art. i want them to say 'he feels tenderly' ". but i thought it was this other artist, not van gogh, so before i caught the van gogh part, i thought, how pretentious of you. in retrospect, i suppose i was being pretentious.

i like it when that part is this shape.
i like the shape of that part.

i was supposed to give allison kelly's phone number so that she (allison) could have jack hanna call kelly to tell her how many people are killed by hippos each year. but i think i failed.

stefan is a hobo-phobe. (im pretty sure he was kidding).
spatial disorientation

i really enjoy the sky right now.
fast moving dark clouds
i want to fly my kite
i want to build a bigger [again, i didnt finish this sentence, why not?]

things that satisfy me: untying knots, scraping dried paint off glass, stapling tyvek smoothly, writing the number four, writing the letter g, wind strong enough to blow me over, fast moving clouds, people, complete silence (hard to come by), looking up very tall objects nearby, feeling insignificant, looking at the trees, looking at most anything simple, looking at people, wide open sky, talking and thinking with people, taking off socks. i also have a new hobby: i collect payphone phone numbers and hide things at the payphones, then i call them at random, and reveal to people where ive hidden things.

'its the difference that is important to her' (satisfying to see the room clean up a lot).

there is a possibility, that when i get really happy, i intentionally start to think of sad things. as if i am somehow trying to keep my happiness in check. i understand the concept of my friends knowing me better than i know myself, but somehow i feel that i am rare, and that that does not apply to me. i think i would claim my large amount of reflection on myself and other things, might help that. although maybe im looking at the wrong things... its that they would understand, or more predict, my future actions, better than i would?

O.H. Buck, foreman of the road crew, recalled the scene after the final explosion: "I began to feel as though the world was coming to an end. I guess I was a bit hazy. Anyway, the next thing I remember I was out on the street."

surrender your mysteries to zoidberg. oh no! professor will hit me. but if zoidberg fixes it, then perhaps gifts! this food actually tastes better as vomit. wait... what would the robutt do?... frame someone! and conjectured that my mother was a prostitute. "in the english countryside, many prostitutes decorate their rooms with festive gourds." -martha stewart
"im swimming in my own soylent waste. its a good thing." -martha stewart

4/25/2007

this is not about ______

somethings so lovely.
but if i could, would i really want to?
these two people are fighting the good fight, raising questions that i hope more people will ask themselves.

i guess, looking back, i feel like i wasnt really there. like im not really here. i remember before, and it was magnificent. i even thought that at the time. ill remember that again in the future.

what is happening when you touch something? when you feel something? when something is painful or pleasant? its some chemical or electrical signal, or a combination of the two, right? why is it so hard to believe that such signals can malfunction? that we can feel pain when we ought not to? cant we extend this to all experience? what does it mean to view something as profound? or stupid? what physically happens when you read a revolutionary, or perceive a paradigm shift? its just a physical state, right? that sense of importance is just similar to previously important sense-induced situations? then why not believe that can malfunction as well? why not even believe that it is simply our brains interpretation of these electro-chemical signals which determines how we perceive the world? 'well then whats the point of living?' many people might ask; the point? there is no point. but thats okay, im having a good time. math is neat, girls are fun, physics is interesting. the world can be quite interesting, and entertaining, if you find the right state to view it in. did i just luck out? maybe, who knows. no one, thats who.

my first introduction to physics theory was in middle school by my sunday school teacher. he told us about imaginary numbers and particle physics and the wave particle duality of light. and ive been hooked ever since. i think i had an odd pre(cant think of the word!?! conceived? no, determined? no, disposition? maybe?) notion of physics, by the fact that people like einstein were considered very highly intelligent, and associated with physics. that said something to my childhood brain. which is a little odd, because now i really dont like the concept of 'smart' and 'intelligent'. those ideas make me uncomfortable.

we threw a party and someone stole our house.

i bought 18 items at the 14 items or less line. thats just the kind of badass i am.
when prospective employers ask if i have a criminal record, im going to respond "more like record criminal!"

"On August 29, a 16 year old boy from Toledo, Ohio accidentally shot himself while playing Russian roulette. He died 2 days later in a local hospital." accidentally? does that make any sense?

i guess, looking back, i feel like i wasnt really there. like im not really here. i remember before, and it was magnificent. i even thought that at the time. ill remember that again in the future.

what if we modeled mass as being 'spread out over infinity', instead of a point particle? that the distribution of the mass of a particle were say 1/r around the proton, or neutron or whatever. so at very close scales it was a lot, but at any reasonably large scale it becomes very very small. how would that effect the motion of galaxies? and the dark matter requirements?
maybe itd make more sense to ask about making the 1/r be somehow related to the mass m.

"its a well known fact that, mexicans are not buoyant. they sink like rocks." --- "yeah, but mexicans are very good at catapult engineering."

i think i know why i dont sleep so well, sort of. when i went to sleep last night i was a little worried id sleep in, because i knew i was sleep deprived already, and that i was going to sleep too late to catch up, i knew i was just going to be further behind. i didnt want to sleep in because im supposed to go get make the set up for the university physics III lab today. so i woke up at 958, which is exactly two minutes before my alarm would normally go off. except when i looked at my clock i remembered that it was set for 1015. so i went back to sleep, and then at 1013 i did the same thing. a panicked-sort-of quickly waking up, looking at the clock, and then thinking, what?? stupid brain.

as a kid, i remember occasionally falling so deeply asleep that it felt like i woke up moments after going to sleep. i remember that every christmas i wanted that to happen, but it never did i dont think. i feel like that sort of sleeping hasnt happened to me since elementary school. although after drinking a whole lot it sort of happens.

in some ways, this 'blog' is sort of like getting inside my head. but only slightly, because most of the things in my head come and go before i get a chance to write them down. these things must be a small portion of the things that actually happen.

3:22 into "first breath after coma"
6:31 into "the only moment we were alone"

we are always trying to one-up ourselves in business; shocking news, new and revolutionary, the story you wont believe. and sensationalism is not restricted to news... lets try to one up ourselves with in happiness. lets be the happiest mother fuckers the planet has ever known.

i think one of the most challenging things that professional baseball players do is sign spherical objects.

as an atheist, i cannot even conceive of a deity with any traits in common to those ideas of formal religions. is it really true that theists cannot conceive of my view either?

shes an IDE

im still not sure if the right and the wrong side is one.

when i worked as a general laborer for construction over the break, i had this idea to make a company that paid the shittiest job the most, and the nicer easier jobs less.
i also had an idea to automate a company to such a high degree that as the single employee i could quit. i think both of these sorts of radical departures from the normal business model/american dream of getting rich might help push the world in the direction i want to see it go in.

in the spring time, girls fall in love with me; its true, the secretary knew my address. she told me she liked watching me sleep. this other women, in the cafeteria (now you know im lying) told me
oops, i never finished that sentence.

computers will inherit the earth.

things id like to see in my lifetime: humankind abandon the notion of 'life is precious' because some old book told them so. humankind abandons organized/popular/ancient religion completely. or even better: humankind abandons all but deist beliefs. thatd be a great stage to get to. governments are important because they protect me. (from who?) "money is important because i need it to survive" – happiness, interest, passion, excitement, are needed to survive; money is incidental. "that the important things in life can be placed on a list" – the important things in life are personal to you.

what is it that you most want in this world? i think less people can answer that question than those who cannot.


other parts of his body were dying as well.

youll help me die better. wont be the first time, wont be the last. he missed the other mans heart. he aimed for it. it was inches away, and he missed.

how many lives do we live? how many times do we die?

no one loses twenty one grams. no one. the law of the conservation of mass, and ultimately energy, ensures that when we die, we dont get to take twenty one grams with us.

i just watched 21 grams, and holy shit, benicio del toro's character leads such a sad life. also, i know this will sound really weird... naomi watts has the largest squarest nipples ive ever seen. even when she is pretending to be asleep. wow, constantly. every scene you can see them, theyre rock solid and enormous. weird. its starting to become a turnoff. we ought to be naked more often.

highlight the absurdities.

have you ever heard something very sad and gasped for air, done that sort of chuckle-exhale bit? have you ever practiced suppressing it?

why is it that i can become so sad, even due to fictional stories, minor tragedies even; why is it that it makes me want to cry, when i so clearly see the meaninglessness of life? when i feel so confidently, that there is no point? how can i be sad about a story that i feel so strongly does not matter? i really want to answer these questions. i want to know why this is. i think it might be somewhat due to a sadness that it does not matter. does that make any sense? that i am sad that these tragedies are meaningless? that they are utterly pointless? that seems unlikely.

dont do anything i wouldnt do. and dont do anything i would do either. either way, definitely dont do anything you would do, that would most certainly result in trouble. on second thought, do what you would do, thatd be great. trouble is wonderful.

another thing id like to see happen in my lifetime: id like to see the general population realize that the world is made up primarily of them. that the 200 or so governments in existence only make up a small portion of the actual people, and that the majority of the people have very similar desires, goals, dreams, fears, failures, problems, issues, hopes, etc, as they do.

please dont lose your mind
to me, it seems that most of those who truly accomplish impressive things, did not set out to impress anyone, but more set out to accomplish things that made them happy.


okay, ive got some number theory ideas now: we define primes as numbers with exactly two positive integer divisors; we could similarly define some sort of 'prime squared' number as those with exactly three unique positive integer divisors. could we construct a number system in which all numbers were prime? or how about one in which there are limited primes? how about one in which the number of primes is equal to the number of composite numbers?
-also, we can construct a list of n numbers such that every number is composite, could we find a way to find the first such list? the list created with the method we were given is definitely not the first such list, (at least for the first several values of n).
-with respect to the factoring problem, see if there is a way to find factors of H by using knowledge of N; if you can find that relationship, maybe you could find a subset of R that contains Z that could be abused to factor in Z/N

concepts/opinions/ideas which i previously thought everyone had, i am now learning are often considered 'weird' or 'different' or 'unthought of', which is painful in some ways, because they seem so self evident. so sensible. so clearly apparent. the state of the world is saddening in light of the fact that we as a group control the state of the world.

Some tried to approach him. "Stay away, this thing will hurt someone," he warned.

you dont have to think of everything, you just have to think of everything someone else will think of, slightly before they think of it.

"That's it, no more medication for me. I sure hope I get laid a lot in the lucid moments from my nightmarish paranoid delusions and horrifying hallucinations."

do you think taoism could make a good pickup line? (to really well-read girls):
The Great Medicine of the Three Mountain Peaks is to be found in the body of the woman and is composed of three juices, or essences: one from the woman's mouth, another from her breasts, and the third, the most powerful, from the Grotto of the White Tiger, which is at the Peak of the Purple Mushroom (the mons veneris).
also, im gonna start using the phrase 'grotto of the white tiger' (peak of the purple mushroom sounds really obvious.)
not that i really need help picking up girls. im pretty sure just asking them out and being myself would probably work. but that is a solved problem, and therefore trivial. (the mathematician overcomes me!).

stay safe. or enjoy the festival.
try to educate my childish heart.
as they say in the espionage business, plausibility was good. real fakes.
its going to be that easy. we will be able to fool them all.
or he became mentally defective.

i just realized, with respect to the discussion of a technological singularity, it would be useful declare the most concretely understood upper bounds to things like information and information processing. the limits of energy utilization, and possibly other things. physics, computer science, information science, place very real restrictions on the capabilities of any entity in the universe.

what you knew when you were 18 is probably less than what you have learned since you were 18. which raises [another] interesting point in the discussion of the technological singularity idea: maybe instead of increasing for ever, we will be limited by our interests. we like to think that right now we have a good understanding of the universe, as if a significant portion of reality were understood, which is very similar to how adolescents view the world.... perhaps a super-intelligent human/computer entity would begin to see that the mystery extends much further, and that the continuously accelerating pace which we currently enjoy has only accounted for a speck of progress in knowledge. perhaps only a tiny bit of knowledge would be needed to realize that knowledge is no more capable of justifying our existence than any of the other mundane things we do. that our happiness should follow whichever direction it takes us, rather than a direction we think it should follow.

idee fix

i looked up hitler in the phone book, but found no entries. i suspect that no one has that name anymore, which would make sense. but its still kind of weird... i remember there was some controversy over whether or not he was influential, in relation to time' magazine's most influential people of the 20th century, i think. i dont feel like looking it up, im not sure if they named him that or just thought about it, but i remember the ensuing controversy.

unbearable despair.

im not really a big fan of thongs. i know thats a departure from the usual science/math/gibberish oriented drivel i write here, but i might as well state it: theres something more attractive about actual underwear than thongs (to me). i could go on, but for some reason i wont. let me know if youd like to further understand my opinions on female undergarments (hows that for a return to the technical wording?)


a sufficiently intelligent person can convince themselves of anything.

i guess, looking back, i feel like i wasnt really there. like im not really here. i remember before, and it was magnificent. i even thought that at the time. ill remember that again in the future.


anyone want to help me explore the grotto of the white tiger?

4/18/2007

no idea so lovely.

what mistakes did i make last time? the computer asked me.

i read this recently: "it is widely believed that our awareness of mortality is a trait that is unique to humans". i dont know if this is true or not, it seems quite reasonable to believe that it is true. but i am very interested in people's ability to test the claim; me, im not clever enough, not nearly. but i know plenty of people are, and i know their approach would fascinate me. its interesting, because the difference between an animal and a human is very minor i think, in the physical structure of us. but past some tipping point we are suddenly allowed to accumulate, and it just makes things so incomparable.

if i were a drug dealer and i donated all my profits to a really good cause, would i be doing a good thing or a bad thing?

in "the lives of others", a character says that "Lenin said about Beethoven's Appasionata: 'I can't listen to it, otherwise I won't be able to finish the revolution.' Can someone who's listened to this music...really listened...still be a bad person?"
part of me believes that anyone is capable of seeing that point; that somehow, people could hear a beautiful song, see a beautiful painting, read a beautiful idea, meet a beautiful person, and just believe that anyone else who has experienced that beauty cannot be bad. but i guess the catch is that many people dont 'really' listen, or see or read or experience, right? thats what they tell me.

you know what they say about paranoia, right? oh, well, we arent going to tell you then.
because even if the world were perfect, you would just be suspect.

terror management theory
im a reasonable man, get off my case, get off my case.
am i really that subtle with my feelings? answer: hidden throughout this message.

everything is happening.

this is weird... i think i noticed this a short while ago, but now im remembering to write it down: sometimes people think differently, and although the different thinking is not all that strong of a conviction, (maybe for neither person, but at least one of them), it leads to a minor dispute, which then grows into a much larger debate/argument/fistfight/knifefight/dual/suicide pact. what im saying is i am sorry. no, more seriously, the minor dispute becomes a much larger argument in which the opinions, or ideas, or even just suspected relations between objects somehow appear as strong convictions, as if their adherents believed firmly in the concept from the beginning. this, as with most things in life, leads to trouble, and misconceived notions, miscommunications, ammunitions, anti-communions... words ill invent, thoughts ill discover. the mind deforms when ideas only hover.

redundancy for the sake of reliability versus secrecy for the sake of secureness. where should the line be drawn?

what really gets me about the bible is that no one knows the authors. listen, god spoke to me. and he told me the bible was entirely wrong. he said he didnt write the thing, some asshole a long time ago just claimed that god had spoken to him, and wrote down things that benefitted him personally. god also told me not to worry about capitalizing his 'name', that he doesnt really give a shit. hey, who are you going to trust, some anonymous person who wrote a bunch of crazy shit thousands of years ago, or me writing crazy shit today? what, you dont trust me? ill give you my atm pin number. what, you say the number i gave you was wrong? well god told me that you were going to do something malicious with my pin number, and that i should give you a fake. so i put my faith in god and i didnt, and he must have been right (to my surprise), seeing as how you found out it was fake. god is telling me that the bible is wrong, that religious folk the world over are really annoying him, and i need to deliver him from them. i think hes asking me to kill him! this is a lot of fun. id like to become a professional blasphemer.

dont give up dont give up dont give up. just dont give up.

my mom, and a friend, both asked me how i was, or what i thought, after the recent virginia tech shooting. i told them what i thought, its sad, you know? but this is what im thinking now.
61728-67703. lets take the lower figure. 61728/365=169, 169/4=42. so for every day we've been in iraq, 42 people have died. thats people. many people call them iraqis, but iraqi is just a subset of person, just like american. we are human before anything else. isnt it obvious?

something so lovely.


in high school we had to take two semesters of gym. ive always been relatively physically fit, so no big deal in that sense, but im extremely introverted, antisocial (in some sense), and anti-competitive, so like many high school kids, i didnt like gym. we had to run the mile. i must have been in 10th grade, sophmore year. i used to be a fairly good long distance runner: in fifth grade i ran a mile and a half in seven minutes and twenty four seconds, and came in second place for a bunch of elementry schools. i also ran the mile in six minutes and twenty four seconds that year. that was my peak time. in middle school i think i took eight minutes. in high school, i dont recall how long it took, i think eight or nine, but this is the whole point of this story. actually, first, a tangent, or two. the day we had to run the mile, there was a guy who was probably the head of the cross country team, who began immediately. while everyone else warmed up or did exercises or something, he ran laps. and i think he probably ran at least two miles before the first heat went. the class was split into two heats: the fast heat and the slow heat. we had to decide which heat to run with ourselves. when the fast heat ran, this guy, who had already run many many laps, ran it in something like four minutes and fifteen seconds. it was incredible. i think he lapped the whole heat at least once. then when everyone had finished, he kept going. he must have run at least a few more miles. me, i had to decide: the fast or the slow. it was tough, because i knew i had slowed, but i knew i used to be fast. so i chose the slow. and i think i finished first. but i also figured out that if i had gone with the fast heat, i would have been last, (just like me right? the middle son, always centered in the middle). the point? i came to the slow heat (keene). i came in first. if i had gone to a good school, would i have come in last? i cant answer that really. but maybe... would it have mattered? probably not.

the other tangent, which i skipped, was mr Carrey's explanation of how he was the 'unambitious science teacher'. maybe ill explain that another time.

4/17/2007

this world needs more color

so what we are trying to reconcile is the imprecision with which the very small operates, and the non-absoluteness with which the very large operates?

science as prediction

Laplace went in state to beg Napoleon to accept a copy of his work, who had heard that the book contained no mention of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, "M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là." (I did not need to make such an assumption). Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, "Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses" (Ah! that is a beautiful assumption; it explains many things). Laplace then declared: "Cette hypothèse, Sire, explique en effet tout, mais ne permet de prédire rien. En tant que savant, je me dois de vous fournir des travaux permettant des prédictions" ("This hypothesis, Sire, does explain everything, but does not permit to predict anything. As a scholar, I must provide you with works permitting predictions." - quoted by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen). Laplace thus defined science as a predicting tool.

so what if i do? so what if i did?

i want to see you in black and white. i want to see your negative. i want to turn the contrast up until all everything is sharp. everything abstract. only the highest highs and lowest lows will remain. the greatest differences. ---or maybe thats how i want you to see me.

i have a degree in baloney, with a minor in reverse psychology. one half of everything i say is a joke. in that last sentence it was the second half; this one too.

i just had an excellent insight into the nature of doubt and proof. doubt will remain in all matters, similarly, proof will forever be unobtainable. however, there is an application of doubt by which one never trusts anything – a skepticism so extreme that one can never be sure of one's own 'existence'. this use of doubt surpasses the utility of doubt. Likewise, there is a use of doubt so benign that it provides no advantage over acceptance of all ideas. perhaps we could construct a mathematics of doubt, with which we could set up a max/min problem to find the correct amount of doubt which allows us to maximize the utility of an idea.

you dont really want to know, right? just repeat that line... please.
repeat after me: i dont really want to know.

there is a very obscure, subtle irony underlying any statement i make concerning my inhumanity. the background is this: i met matt doyle in third grade. he was new to the school, and i was the nice young boy who was very agreeable and very accepting, and so i got along with everyone; i had no enemies, and was even friends with people who were enemies of each other. my two closest friends in fact, seemed to despise one another. matt however was new, and was a bit of an outcast. one day on the playground he told me 'a secret' that he was an android. in retrospect, im sure he was just a little boy doing what little boys do: play pretend. however at the time i thought he was 'stupid' (i didnt think stupid the way most people do, just ridiculous, or immature maybe even). i believe my response was a subtle display of disbelief, accompanied by vocalized acceptance of the idea. however, inside i had moved matt from the "intelligent, can be learned from" category to the "should be intellectually avoided" category. now, when i make statements concerning my inhumanity, i am not professing to be anything other than homo-sapien. however, i am attempting to declare my independence from the common beliefs, ideals, desires, habits, (as well as many other annoying properties) that human beings in general hold dear.

who id like to meet: someone who hates the universe at least as much as i do. also, they must be in love with the universe at least as much as i am.

i need to talk to dr Wilson about pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer, physics, and why people are unhappy. i have no real reason to be unhappy, other than the current lack of any fullfilling relationship with the opposite sex, but if it were that simple i could probably go find a girl immediately.

we are descendent from monsters.

heres the line of thought: russian communism failed, why? well, because those in power abused their power. why? why is it that people want to abuse power? why do people want power in the first place? 'power corrupts', but why?

we made it all up. happy, sad, embarrassed, it doesnt actually exist; its a figment--a farse.

one time, after talking to my dad about computers and their ability to simulate things, i asked him, could you imagine what it would be like if computers could simulate weather so accurately, that they could tell you within minutes of when it would rain months from now? and where? that would be an awfully astounding feat, right?

another good question for scott's blog: what is the time complexity of the problem P=NP?

after Gödel's incompleteness theorems blew my mind (AGAIN, after many months of re-reading them), ive decided that the theorems constitute a proof of our intelligence out performing its utility. we are way too smart for our own good.

and then i smile.

some people argue that there is no such thing as a selfless act, and if you give them examples of seemingly selfless acts, they will always explain it away with various subtleties, such as to clear their conscious, or to make themselves feel good inside. even if they do something good for others anonymous, they are still promoting their own psychological well-being somehow. although i tend to disagree with the general statement that all acts of kindness are motivated ultimately by acts of kindness, i will concede to this point, as i follow the argument and find it very plausible. however, to convey my understanding of non-selfish acts of kindness, we should consider a more fluid understanding of 'selfish' vs 'selfless', and rather than taking on the two value, "black or white" system generally used to interpret these acts, we should take acts to be some mix of the two qualities, ranging all the way from 100/0 being completely selfish, to 0/100 being completely selfless, and 50/50 being an intermediate state in which selfish and selfless motivations are equal. taking such a scaling allows us to clarify the idea that all acts of kindness are ultimately selfish, more acceptably stating it as all acts of kindness contain a selfish element. taking this continuous range, it seems likely that most acts of kindness are neither 100% selfish nor 100% selfless, but rather a mixture, with one occasionally dominating the other. additionally, i would state that acts of kindness performed anonymously, by someone who does not feel any personal guilt or debt to anyone, would be approaching the 0/100 state. I know that many people doubt this, but there do exist individuals who genuinely care about other human beings for reasons they do not even understand; they are compelled to improve the lives of their fellow humans by urges more fundamental than the conclusions they reach logically, perhaps not as deeply as instincts (although that may be the case), but possibly learned behavior at such a young and influential age that their concern for fellow humankind is the greatest of their motivations.

i look at the ground to see if its raining.

holy shit, gauge invariance introduced in a place where i might actually understand it! and earlier i was thinking about how i need to describe 'good' and 'bad' in terms of a 'gauge invariance', where there is no true zero, or something...

BREATHE MORE DEEPLY.

at about seven and one half minutes in, "motherfucker=redeemer (part one)" seems as lovely as any idea ive ever known.

i told keith, "good luck" with the grading he had to do... and then i wondered to myself, 'i seem to say that a lot... am i sincere?' i think i am. but somehow i feel uncertain, which isnt a good sign, because confidence counts when assessing sincerity. so now i wonder, do others believe me to be sincere? it doesnt matter, does it.

id like to become addicted to embarrassing moments, situations, habits.
i want to make a scene.

do i say things beyond words? if i do i believe i am unaware.

are we just more aware of the importance (and lack thereof) of jobs? what is the relationship between my survival and the work of other people? does my survival rely directly on anyone anymore? -no. my survival is more reliant on large groups of people. the farmer could quit, the trucker go rogue, the grocer drop dead, but i would still get fed. from other farmers, grocers and truckers. most other jobs equal luxury. food, shelter, water, sanitary, clothing, social health... am i missing something? theres more to this, but im just going to end it here. as with most of my thoughts, they are much more developed and sensical when i am sharing them directly with others, rather than typing them off the top of my head. its so much easier to think with people.



my favorite phrases in this post are 'breathe more deeply', 'we are descendent from monsters', 'and then i smile' and 'this world needs more color'. i dont know where they have come from, but that is typical.

i should write less at a time, or write more often.

4/10/2007

try running as far as you can without breathing. see how much anaerobic energy you have.
also, ask that girl what sort of time span the blood sugar level spike occurs for. seconds? minutes? hours?

decorate decorate

i like flossing because its as if you get to taste your meal a second time, hours after youve eaten it.

i just saw a bumper sticker that read something like, "you will not silence my message - you will not mock my god - you will not (something, i forgot) my generation"
and i wanted to write a note and leave it on their car reading, i wont silence your message, or whatever your generation, but i will mock your god. and if he is even remotely worthy of worship, youd imagine that he would defend himself. or do you believe your mighty creator to be incapable of receiving my mockery? will i hurt it's feelings? and why all the masculinity when referring to god? does this god have male genitals? if so, then okay, if not, then it seems misrepresentative of the definition of male and female, his and her, he and she, to call god he.

this, surprised me.
heartbreaking and brilliant.

good news: lee smolin seems to think we need a return to philosophical guidance in foundational physics, which is good news because i seem unable to abandon my philosophical curiosities in relation to physics, a problem which will most likely wreak havoc on my learning and understanding of quantum mechanics. i think it is noticeable how my philosophical understanding of phenomena has begun to trail my mathematical understanding as ive worked through Electricity and magnetism.

note to self (isnt most everything here?): stop thinking in terms of "heavy/massive=big" and "light=small", instead think of, heavy/massive=stuck, light=free to roam. why should massive particles be any larger than non massive ones?

i was standing in a liquor store, staring at the rum, when a man walked by smiling. a moment later, he walked by again, in the other direction, and said, "just buy them all". so i responded "i cant afford to", to which he said "just run really fast." so then i went to the register, and the man was in front of me in line, finishing his payment or something. so i told him, "i cant run that fast." and he said "after a few drinks you can". so i told him, "well, after a few drinks i might think i can", he said, "thats all that really matters right?"
now i realize: i bought this fairly cheap whiskey. and the reasons? well, it had a cool looking bottle, it was fairly cheap, and it was canadian. normally it would have been a type of rum, which makes me think of pirates, which would also have contributed to my causes, but this is whiskey, which i do associate with being cool still, but only because jared dawicki drinks it. the canadian however is a big plus really, not bigger than the cost, but still big.

laughing on the way down.

interests: looking at things–especially things which appear to have no definite pattern or structure to them.

"gimme the boat cleaner, in a needle."

its funny, if you can really separate yourself and your experiences from the effects of a drug like alcohol or marijuana, then you can see that even alcohol has benefits, when used very very moderately. however, marijuana has greater benefits. obviously making it a more desirable drug for legal use. it not only have greater benefits but lesser drawbacks. shame that we cannot admit that to ourselves as a whole society. also, fuck you william randolph hearst: the damage you caused to the species is immeasurable.

you should end all phone conversations with, "ill contact you with further instructions", that would seem very mysterious; spy like, it would be exciting!

why is it that, although most people masturbate (quite often even), it is in poor taste to discuss it publicly? why is it frowned upon to be honest? if you actually want society to get better, to be more open and free, if you want politicians to be more honest, we ought to curb this behavior of ours, of shunning highly common private issues of which we usually consider embarrassing. (do i seem all to excited to start this conversation? ha ha ha!)

and i dont want that either.

it seems the happiest people i know are the ones who annul all their inherited notions of how the world is, and learn to explore the world in their own view.

youre right about many things. i want to do things differently.

this is kind of fun to think about: normally, if you were to guess an answer to a question/problem/whatever, you would have some non-zero chance of being right, and some non-zero chance of being wrong. and if you took most instances of most types of questions/problems/whatever, this would be true... so, think of a game where i think of a number and you guess it, well, an 'instance' of this 'type' of game is when i think of the number twelve. now if we change the type of game slightly, we can make it so you have a zero probability of winning. all we need to do is allow me to be influence by your guess, as well as allow me to change the number i thought of. then you simply cannot win. it really comes from my favorite version of newcomb's paradox, which is this: an omniscient being, call it yahweh/god/allah, whatever you prefer, being omniscient, they make a prediction about your behavior. they have two glass boxes, today they will decide whether tomorrow you will choose both boxes or only one. if they predict that you will take both boxes, then they will place 1000 dollars in one box, and nothing in the other. on the other hand, if they predict that you will only take only the one box, then they will place a million dollars in that box, as well as the thousand dollars in the first box. tomorrow however, you will look at the boxes, and regardless of your decision or intention today, you might be tempted to change your mind. perhaps you will see that there is a million dollars in the one box and the thousand in the other and decide, "why not take both?", or you might see that the second box is empty, and decide, "that bastard (god)! ill show his 'greatness' how great he really is!" and chose only the empty box (out of spite i suppose). either way, god is fucked. he is simply wrong. maybe the key religious resolution to this would be to point out my phrasing '...tempted to change your mind...', so they could pawn it off as an evil temptation. but if the idea of right and wrong are based around "maximizing your well-being" is wrong and "helping some mythical beast look good" is right, then fuck that. humans are much too smart to have a god that could really help us in any real way.

fervid intimacy ensued.

dammit, i need to really consider the consequences, or more the uses of non-halting turing machines. has anyone considered any uses to non-halting TMs? seems like they would have, but i never hear of it. perhaps becaues it is not fruitful?

a lot of people love you, because you are how you are.

i love the phrase "conventional jelly bean"
"It was not until 1930 or so that jelly beans became an Easter candy, presumably from their resemblance to eggs." oh yes, because that makes perfect sense. easter = eggs. religion and tradition might anger me to no end some times, however, the specifics of the traditions are just baffling.

cascading failure. existential crisis.

as expected, the US government trumps all with its willingness to fund quantum computing. not surprising, QC is more valuable to the US government then, well, probably anyone else on the planet. they have more secrets, of greater value, then the rest of the world, surely. additionally, they have a budget so large, 'dwarf's doesnt do it justice; the US government can spend many times more money researching QC than the rest of the world combined, and still only be spending a small fraction of their over all military R&D budget. its downright ridiculous.

treat school like it is your JOB.
treat art like it is your reward.
like everything old becoming new i wanna be next to you.

i wish i could tell you everything.

a moment ago i began using my left hand to play with my right ear. and it felt as if i were exploring something foreign, as if my ear were not me. exploring further i used my right hand to touch my left ear, and got a similar result. it is kind of fun.

harry potter and the dominatrix? harry potter and the sexual deviant? i guess my harry potter story isnt ever gonna be told.

"For the second half of the film, I also played the part of Yul Brynner." -Charlton Heston
"brought to you by month old franks, 'the hotdogs with experience' "

but we cant control everything in the world.
you want them to hate you.

it needent involve movement. it can be just the subtlest, slowest of feelings. enjoy the feelings.

you fell out of the sky.
in fragments
i want to learn to draw through my sense of touch.

broken in a thousand pieces.

4/02/2007

ive got pins and needles for you.

In general, failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It may be viewed as the opposite of success.

if we do happen to create artificial intelligence one day, i would expect it to be somewhat like raising a child. but something you cannot do with humans, that you could do with AI, is transfer years of work from one instance of hardware to another. so if you did happen to train your AI robot to have human like intelligence, you could very easily have a second robot with the same level of training by simply copying the files to the second robot. now this brings up an interesting question to me, lets refer to the AI as an intelligence, instead of a robot or computer, in my opinion, once you can separate the intelligence from the mechanical hardware which drives it, the remaining intelligence is equivalent (roughly) to any other instance, human or 'artificial'. anyway, once the intelligence has been copied, the two instances would begin to experience/think/learn differently, and become essentially two unique intelligences. which leads me to wonder about murder. certainly if we copied my intelligence to a second human, it would appear as if there were two 'cody's'. but after years we would undoubtedly know different things, experience different things. now after years it would certainly seem wrong to kill either of us, as itd be murder. but the instant my intelligence was copied, we would expect one of the instances of cody could be destroyed without too much guilt, as ultimately 'cody' would still remain.

how long do you think it takes for applesauce to go bad?

i think i just want people to be passionate about things. i think thats what people find attractive in me. from my perspective however (although im not positive), i dont believe that is what i find attractive in girls. i think what i find attractive is... thought. girls who think. have ideas. creativity. i think im attracted to girls that understand some of the many things i dont.

if i want to be unique, ill need to follow the diagonal argument; picking up a single trait from every person and flipping it over.

theyre practicing being cruel and unusual.

i didnt mean it that way.
my alarm clock program just told me, "please select a date and time in the future." but i read it as... "please select a date and time... in the future!"
what is the difference between 'knowing' something and 'thinking' you know something?
my two favorite things are commitment, and changing myself.
if you dont like the stations, you can just play with my buttons until you find something we both enjoy.

hey, dont look at me, its not my fault. yes it is.

tell everett: this is how it works, every scientific achievement we make reduces the power of god. first it was, why do the planets revolve the way they do? according to the whims of the great creator. but then it was discovered they revolved in ellipses, and the great creator suddenly had to do it a certain way. then it was discovered that the ellipses could be explained in terms of a more general theory of universal gravitation, which further restricted the 'whims' of the great creator.

ambiguity aversion

with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. -Steven Weinberg
to add to that, i think that most of what people think of as 'evil' is not necessarily so, and certainly to a much lesser degree. i think a lot of people feel guilt over things and assume thats evil, but guilt and evil are learned behaviors. you wouldnt call lions evil, nor would they feel guilty. that doesnt mean we cant or shouldnt have morals, but we certainly should take caution in what we take to be right and wrong, and what we should and should not regret. i want to go on about this actually.

im gonna drink till i reboot

oh man what a mess:
When later challenges to the Bogdanov papers' legitimacy arose, the debate spread to the question of whether the substitution of a "publication requirement" by university professors when they do not understand students' work is a valid means of determining the veracity of a paper. However, the intrinsic complexity of topics like quantum groups and topological field theory (as well as the growth of excessive jargon used by those who study these areas) makes it difficult to avoid such delegation, since often specific expertise is necessary in order to fully understand and evaluate the claims made in papers in these fields. --- we need a better way of organizing this progress, as to prevent such embarrassing events.

i try not to impress

holy fuck, tornados on the sun!?!? how fucking scary an idea is that? keep in mind, those 'tornados' are more on the scale of our planet than the scale of our states/cities/towns.

ive got pins and needles for you.

dear professor miller,
"So, it looks as if there are two possibilities." are you serious? i can think of TONS of other possibilities. perhaps they dont want to contact us (for which many reasons we can imagine exist, such as issues of their own privacy; an uncertainty in us as an emerging species, etc). perhaps they use more efficient means of communication, such as focused laser-like radio signals aimed directly at their receiver rather than the inefficient broadly directional dishes we currently use, making their communications more difficult to find. perhaps their interstellar communications are so advanced in their compression techniques that they appear random to us. perhaps the energy requirements to leave a planet are greater than the past minds have suspected (personally, i think this is a very large part of it). perhaps they are so vastly distant that their signals die off too completely for us to detect. perhaps perhaps perhaps. realize this: no matter how stupid some people might be, no matter how willing they might be to substitute friends with tv, healthy food with fast food, and sex with pornography, there will remain PLENTY of us who are unwilling to make such trades. and if we are the only ones procreating, intentionally, our proportion should not be expected to decrease in any industrialized nation.
"It will be a meeting of dead-serious super-parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox. They will toast each other not in a soft-porn Holodeck, but in a sacred nursery." also, realize this: people can expand beyond their environments. there are plenty of children who outsmart their parents. i was raised with a small amount of tv, and i happen to hate the thing. many more people were raised right here in modern society by parents that loathe tvs, and didnt allow their children to see it at all. this has worked in some instances, and failed in others. likewise, many couch potato parents led to couch potato children, however, there are plenty of kids who see the couch-ridden world as a boring waste of life, and intentionally leave it. it goes both ways. just because you have a shitty childhood doesnt mean you cant do great things, and just because you are raised with every benefit to your intellectual upbringing possible, doesnt mean you wont find happiness in a video game (though personally the latter possibility saddens me).

i dont want to remember clothing.

the only thing that lie detector will tell you is exactly what i want you to think.

somehow i think this is a very profound idea, but itll be hard to put in words. how can we formalize, with mathematics, the concept that time doesnt just 'move forward' but rather that it fluctuates back and forth very slightly, and over all is 'conserved' in a way that leads to it's 'moving forward'? sort of the way particles in the vacuum fluctuations pop in and out of existence.

call me the yrast
unreliable narrator

to write about: dr. abernathy's mention of physicists getting bored and not finishing the problem
also, wants/needs and other things. very few people know what they want. we all need roughly the same stuff. religion, politics, society, parents, peers, all distort what we want. freedom from the influence of those things could be beneficial to most people. thats not to say no friends/family/social life, but more, not to allow those things to influence decisions.

i think we need new/more experiments, to determine more about gravity. i think also the speed of light implying the fundamental idea is velocity is important.

these horrible decisions we make, are they worse than the sad outcomes we risk by not making them?

behold, the one commandment: god needs booze.
this is the worst crazy sect ive ever been in.

probably some people that know me fairly well will disagree with me on this, but im starting to think i have a very low comprehension ability. and the reason is that i read what i think are supposed to be simple ideas, and it seems i do not understand them, with increasing frequency. i dont seem to understand simple solutions to homework problems or simple proof ideas. instead i just sort of understand what they are supposed to be doing, and then figure out how to make them up myself. i guess it seems as if the 'spectrum' between my understanding something and my ignorance of it is very polarized; i either get it fully, or i do not get it in the least bit.

its so important for people to be around other people that in prison, that is what they take away from you: your privilege to be around other people. dont underestimate the importance of human interaction.

people look at me funny if i say, i dont use deodorant. but how many of them know where that came from? why it exists? how old a tradition it is? humans had no difficulty finding mates long before deodorant and modern showers, why do we have so much trouble now?

So how do we know the monsters ever were there?

dave bacon's test for mathematicians:
I actually have a test for whether you are a mathematician. Place yourself and a large potted plant in a huge room together. If you get tangled up in the plant, you are a mathematician. I draw this test from careful observation of the MSRI in Berkeley.

the downside to our personal judgments of insightfulness, introspection and the like, is that its all extremely subjective. just because you feel something is important doesnt make it important. substituting the word important with profound, wonderful, great, true, right, correct, etc gives the same result.

first megan's party - good time. i liked everything. lots of girls think im attractive i guess. and guys? wait, what?
found two quarters in the phone.
love notes to strangers.

you cannot choose what you want.

the story is told by an omniscient narrator.

emotionally unavailable - am i? i tried looking it up, couldnt find anything good to explain it.

are there economic models to phase out work? it seems essential, as we learn to automate more, how do we expect to continue to working? i hear people's counterargument a lot: but how will we buy the things the machines produce? well, why will the things the machines produce cost money? i want to start a fast food restaurant that is 100% completely automated. everything from ordering/receiving deliveries to money transfers and calling/scheduling repair men to fix/maintain the place. then, as soul owner of the store, i would quit. the store would have a computer that would attempt to maintain enough profit to run the place, and also whatever extra it seemed to make (past some safety buffer) it could donate to good causes, like college scholarships say.

good idea recently: weve spent about 360 billions dollars in iraq so far. iraq's GDP is just under 90 billion dollars. we could have paid the entire population of iraq to go on vacation, for three years straight. which got me thinking, instead of that, why didnt we just buy their army? why dont we buy north korea's? loyalty? yeah, i know, but most people can be bought no matter how loyal they are. and for 360 billions dollars, you can buy a lot of people, even if they are loyal. in fact, buy the leaders. is there anything they could possibly want but not have with that much money?

i was thinking the other day, can i lie to myself? and i dont think i can. here is the reason why: lying involves knowing the truth and presenting something else, or not presenting it correctly/accurately. i do not forsee how i can know the truth yet still convince myself of something else. in fact, id love to be able to do that, but i dont know how to go about doing it. any advice anyone?

ive been in a very creative mood lately.

this weekend i attended birthday parties for two different girls named megan. saturday was in keene, and sunday was in concord. bowling and dancing and sitting and observing and interacting and talking and eating and smiling and laughing and catching up. it was enjoyable.

wearing a unitard or leotard and tights helps to minimize this sensation.

what are you passionate about?