3·23·09
Something I wondered recently: science is often vilified, along the lines of having a track record of being arrogant and then shown wrong, or having a big head that leads to devastating consequences later. This is the theme of countless fictional works, (e.g. Jurassic Park), but are there any examples of it happening in real life? The closest I can think of is the atomic bomb, but I find that easily dismissed by two statements. 1. There was a very reasonable, well justified concern that Germany would build one first, and if so, would almost surely decimate it's enemies, possibly winning it's wars. 2. While it was the scientists who dreamed it up, sold it, and constructed it, it was the politicians and governments who chose to use it, further develop it, and stockpile it in copious amounts.
Other than that, what has science done? Nearly eradicated the worst of the diseases, increased the food supply to levels capable of sustaining the population, caught and averted multiple pollution disasters (e.g. ozone layer), developed travel and mathematics and computers and various other technology to reduce the resistance of information flow to nearly zero, extended our foresight, educated us... solved virtually every threat to our existence except ourselves. What the fuck did we do to you people?
I really would like to develop a mathematical model of 'goodness' that could accurately capture the distribution of playing fair versus cheating you would expect to see in real life, with as few as possible details about the players. Maybe we could reduce it to simple replication motivation by genetic material.
3·24·09
I suspect that one of the most important lessons that can be learnt, a lesson which is exceedingly obvious in light of the history of science, is that intuition isn't, and statements exerting any form of supreme certainty should only be dealt out with explicit and comprehensive disclaimers, and adopted only with perpetual uncertainty. It is sub-tragic that Einstein had not learned this lesson before publishing his famous collaborative paper with Podolsky and Rosen.
Although, is it possible that his unwavering discomfort with the emerging quantum mechanical physics was a greater motivation for his exploration of the implications than any sort of acceptance of the theory would have inspired? Could I learn a lesson from this and use my discomfort for spatially and temporally finite cosmological models as inspirations for novel new predictions and tests of the models I so strongly oppose?
Keep your eyes on the prize.
Cause thats where you wanted to go.
I think the fundamental problem with concerning ourselves over genetic predisposition for mental illness is out tendency to treat mental disorders as being equally insurmountable as many physical disorders. Unlike physical disorders, mental disorders are (by definition) largely influenced by the mind, which is an unmeasurably fluid device, defying our attempts at modeling, if only out of desire to remain unpredictable. While I'm not advocating mind over matter, and I'm not saying mental disorders are an illusion or a state of mind, I am saying that the ability of the mind to treat (and improve) itself is probably much more effective than we typically credit it, and without trying that avenue, we forfeit what might be one of the greater resources for treatment. (Though I am almost certainly being overly critical, as whole fields of medicine are centered around treating the mind without concerning the physics.)
3·25·09
Having a joke.
TRUST NOTHING. TEST EVERYTHING.
This is great.
This is pretty cool too.
Differential geometry?...!
Do I even know what I am doing right now?
I should try watching Better Off Ted.
what?
Reminder: study the historical income tax brackets for the united states in more depth.
"What if Leaving is a Loving Thing"
"if anyone matters it's you"
3·29·09
Whereas a few months ago, most talk I had heard would have been "there need not be conflict between religion and science", I am seeing the tides turn, and now frequently reading, "the conflict is not really resolvable, the two cannot be reconciled." This is an exciting development, I think the conflict is heating up, and the rationalists are growing more comfortable speaking up, speaking out, and being straightforward.
AQ scores: 34, 44, 38, 41
3·30·09
The difference between us is that you credit the individual for generating the majority of their own wealth, while I credit the society for generating the majority of an individual's wealth. After that, we both reward the credit accordingly with money. We would probably both agree that both the society and the individual are integral to the process, and that both deserve some compensation. In my view, how much we compensate the society is directly related to how much the individual has benefited, in your view, it is a flat rate.
Christianity is a sin.
3·31·09
I think for the first time, possibly in my entire life, I actually feel more dedicated to my career goals than to finding a romantic partner.
The box is probably worth something too. Some boxes are worth a lot.
Communications men.
I'm not sure why but I really like this image.
I really do think that science is the only method by which one can reliably understand anything. That is, you may understand things by other means, but the other means will not work reliably; intuition may work quite often, but it will break down sooner or later. Guessing is another method that might work in some circumstances.
4·1·09
Where does the bible say that an embryo is a human?
4·3·09
As long as the music is playing, there are no losers.
4·4·09
Lies!
McDonalds Hamburgers, Chinese communism...
High powered money.
Monetary base.
4·6·09
Write your own instruction manual, by experiencing the world, learning, and following your heart.
"It was suddenly clear, they didn't have a clue.
I must have made a mistake.
What a fool I'd been.
I felt betrayed and lied to.
I suddenly felt alone, trapped in a gigantic lie."
I don't think I ever had an imaginary friend. Did you?
Hug harder.
"Recently I've taken up graffiti, it's cheaper than being a writer."
Or can we decide.
And if I fail, I will fail you. Then what?
Can you feel it?
Is this really what we are?
Whoopsy daisy.
I hope you are grand.
I haven't felt myself of late.
I think an artist is not a person who makes things beautiful, but simply one who deliberately makes things as well as he can -- whether he is a clock-maker or picture-painter; because machine-made things are very much better when no "designer" has had anything to do with them -- when they are just plain serviceable things. I think that if you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.
-Eric Gill
4·7·09
"It's love, not Santa Claus."
Smash it to Pieces.
"behind the ...nice try."
4·8·09
Brain size.
Synaptic pruning.
Pace your rage.
What do you believe? And why do you believe it?
Everybody wants roughly the same things: happiness, for themselves, for their offspring, for their friends and family. People tend to want to live a comfortable life, to not have to struggle to make ends meet or enjoy the world. And nearly always to have your offspring enjoy a life even greater than your own.
Some hearts are true.
This makes me so angry.
This is fucking hilarious. I love how the points are all centered around what is good and bad about marriage, or children, without addressing anything about homosexual or heterosexual couples.
1 Marriage reduces the risk of poverty for children and communities. The majority of children whose parents don’t get or stay married experience at least a year of poverty.
So... let homosexual couples get married? It sounds like if they do have kids, regardless of means, that it would be best for the child if the couple were married.
2 Fatherless households increase crime. Boys whose parents divorced or never married, for example, are two to three times more likely to end up in jail as adults.
So... don't let lesbian couples adopt boys? But wait, the opener, "fatherless households..." is completely unrelated to the point, "boys [with unwed parents...] are more likely to end up in jail." Reading the explanation alone, again, implies let homosexuals marry, especially if they have children.
3 Marriage protects children’s physical and mental health. Children whose parents get and stay married are healthier and also much less likely to suffer mental illness, including depression and teen suicide.
WHAT THE FUCK. Two options: if you let homosexuals have kids, then it's best if they were married; if you don't think homosexuals have kids, then your point is unrelated.
4 Both men and women who marry live longer, healthier and happier lives. On virtually every measure of health and well-being, married people are better-off than otherwise similar singles, on average.
AHHHH!!!! THEN LET THEM MARRY!
5 Just living together is not the same as marriage. Married couples who cohabit first are thirty to fifty percent more likely to divorce. People who just live together do not get the same boost to health, welfare and happiness, on average, as spouses. Neither do their children. Children whose parents cohabit are at increased risk for domestic violence and child abuse and neglect. Children born to parents who were just living together are also three times more likely to experience their parents’ breakup by age 5.
I am stupefied; the same responses from above apply to this.
6 Parents who don’t get or stay married put children’s education at risk. Children whose parents divorced or never married have lower grade point averages, are more likely to be held back a grade, and to drop out of school. They are also less likely to end up college graduates.
I know it's wrong for me to say, or imply that these people are somehow mentally handicapped, or 'retarded', or 'fucking idiots' or a host of other things, so I won't say those things. But I'll certainly be thinking it loudly.
7 When marriages fail, ties between parents and children typically weaken too. Adult children whose parents divorced are only half as likely to have warm, close ties to both their mothers and their fathers. For example, in one large national survey, 65 percent of adult chilrden of divorce reported they were not close to their fathers (compared to 29 percent of adults from intact marriages).
Again, same problems as before. We are talking about gay marriage, if you'd like to include adoption rights, fine by me. How about all the statistics describing unwanted children? What do you think the correlation is between birthing an unwanted child and that child's chances of criminal behavior, low standard of living, absence of loving parents, mental and physical health problems, and academic performance? Would you bet against my claim that they are highly correlated? Would you bet against my claim that same sex couples who go through the adoption process are significantly less likely to have unwanted children than traditional heterosexual couples? I doubt their is data on these things, but I'll bet the same correlation would appear between heterosexual couples that adopt versus those that don't, and I'll bet the gap widens when unwanted childbirth between heterosexuals is compared directly to those who adopt. Congratulations 'nation for marriage.org', you've convinced me to not only be pro gay marriage, you've convinced me to be pro gay couple adoption. Don't take it too hard, I was already pro those things. You've just made me more fervently anti-catholic, anti-religious, and anti-conservativism (in the "preserve tradition" and "things should not change" sense, not the republican sense). Not that I could have been any more against those things than I already was.
I love how they don't mention anything about gay couples adopting, but they constantly bring up kids.
4·9·09
How awesome is this?
"Troubled hearts map deserts, and they rarely do come back."
How magnificent must the universe be, before it distracts us from ourselves?
4·10·09
I just realized that humility and arrogance are not mutually exclusive, and that although I am now increasingly arrogant, that previously I was extremely arrogant, but in a timid way. Timidity has probably been my most influential trait within my lifetime, and yet lying beneath it has always been a supreme arrogance. In fact, the very motivation for timidness has more often than not been a fear of destruction, along with a complete lack of fear of being destroyed.
"You'll all feel much better when you let go of belief in the celestial north korea"
Can you think of any examples of pure science resulting in unintended perverse results? It's a common theme of science fiction, but I do not believe it is very common in science. The closest I can think of are nuclear weapons, which I think are much more complicated than "scientists said it'd be fine", and vaccinations, which I think have similar excuses, and which additionally have caused so much good that I think most people would accept the negatives (at least for some diseases, like smallpox). I think I wrote about this at the top of this post too?
Nocebo.
Yet more awe-inducing science.
"I don't think this is a brains sort of operation."
I very much like the sentiment of this comic.
Overnight market. Overnight rate. Interbank lending market. Fractional-reserve. Money supply
And a misplaced sense of value?
"You're prettier when you're mine."
"You're out of range."
4·14·09
Because what was true yesterday must also be true tomorrow.
Orcas being brilliant.
and pretty much the same event with a little more info maybe.
Kind of an odd note to end things on.
4/14/2009
3/21/2009
Culture of Silence
Fail Gracefully
3·1·09
It's hard to want to stay away.
His condition is such that he will never know about it.
Just in case.
"In one famous experiment, Brenda Milner, a Canadian psychologist, asked HM to remember the number 584 for as long as possible. To keep the number on the tip of his tongue, he used a complicated system, which he recounted to Milner:
"It's easy. You just remember 8. You see 5, 8, and 4 add to 17. You remember 8, subtract it from 17, and it leaves 9. Divide 9 in half and you get 5 and 4 and there you are: 584. Easy."
He concentrated on this elaborate mantra for several minutes. But as soon as he was distracted, the number dissolved. He couldn't even remember that he'd been asked to remember something."
I think the best governments (if they exist at all), should have strong, well funded campaigns to educate it's populace and raise awareness of the importance of unbridled public criticism of the government and it's policies. You ought to do everything you can to make me interested in what you are doing, and loud if I disagree. Communication is the key, and most of us don't even know how.
3·2·09
Listen, we are alone, we all suffer similar struggles in a similar amount of time; we all face the same gloomy unknown. It's not pleasant, but instead of arguing about the details of who's fault it is, or who should be praised for it, or the details of ancient superstitions and how they relate to the struggles we face today and in the future, maybe we could try investigating the problems we face, looking for solutions, and attempting to implement said solutions to make our lives more pleasurable, and everyone in the future as well.
3·8·09
Path dependence
I prefer to be in a constant state of crisis.
What, just by dumb luck we happen to have struck the magic method of science, and we developed so rapidly that no one could possibly compete with us.
Could you handle being threatened with a gun? For some reason I think that would hit me really hard. Imagine knowing you are a quarter of an inch away from death. A muscle spasm away from non-existence. I imagine that such an experience takes a costly toll from anyone who experiences it.
I'm really happy I met you.
Why do these things so strongly affect me? Stupid human beings, stupid brain.
Can god deliver a religion addict?
"There are so many powers of ten that I don't even know what english word to apply to it."
-Steven Weinberg (in part 2)
(Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) - Richard Dawkins)
The interview with Randolph Nesse is really good.
So Weinberg mentions the fluctuations in the fields (EM, or gravity, or any field), the calculated value is about 56 orders of magnitude larger than the observed value (the cosmological constant indicates a very low energy density for empty space, about a few barrels of oil in a volume the size of the earth). Is there a modification we can make to the theory of gravity that would change the observations to fit the calculated value? I think he also mentioned that the calculated value was mostly first order, and its possible higher order terms have a large influence, though it seems unlikely given the 56 magnitude.
I'm a macho physicist. Though I admit we may never know, and actually I would not be willing to put a likelihood on whether we ever will or not. But I can conceive of it all being understood, and I have glimpsed one possible approach that... crap, I didn't finish this sentence and I don't remember what I was thinking.
Hmm, are there any girls interested in helping me determine the spring constant of my mattress?
Awe
I didn't watch these yet.
Dawkins & Aubrey Manning
Dawkins at UC Berkley
Our existence doesn't really tell us anything about the probability of life arising, or intelligent life arising, or even the probability of life-supporting planets existing.
Okay, so about a month ago I came across this: US bribe insurgents to fight Al-Qaeda, which induced in me strong feelings of vindication, since I had been advocating bribery for quite some time before that. I have a new idea however! We must send them, THE INTERNET! And not just Iraqi insurgents, send it to anyone we are worried about. Quick, start mailing computers to North Korea, and set up a free ISP there. And maybe a small education program on how to use it. Who's gonna turn it down? When you go to sell this to the world leaders that hate us, just show them the stuff they'll like, Kim will love the streaming video stuff, we just won't show him anything he won't like.
"When life gives you lemons, just say fuck the lemons and bail."
"I like the hair. I wonder if the carpet matches her pubes."
(Paul Rudd's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
Culture of Silence.
3·9·09
I'm actually embarrassed to be an american. Less than half of us understand evolution. That's something virtually everyone should have known before middle school.
There is no other side.
A real movie about science, with the big bang through human evolution? That could be interesting. It could be wonderful. Could it be portrayed in logarithmic time?
I'm a little surprised, a little disturbed, and a little excited (happy) that Dawkins and Krauss, after mentioning Mike Huckabee's statement about running for president rather than a writing an 8th grade biology textbook, neither one of them mentioned my simple criticism of that statement which is: a prerequisite of presidential bids should be the ability to pass an 8th grade biology class, and denying evolution should warrant a failure of 8th grade biology.
Learn to talk like a physicist.
I want to find the Attenborough series I saw in 5th grade (because it is good).
Now I need to watch The Ascent of Man
Easily one of the most messed up things I have ever heard of.
PZ Meyers interviewed by Richard Dawkins. I don't think I watched more than the first few minutes yet, and I'm a little concerned that they were speaking really technically.
Lawrence Krauss and Dawkins.
3·10·09
We [humans] just launched a satellite that should be capable of detecting earth-like extrasolar planets—for the first time pointing us towards potential equival homes, which can more importantly be interpreted as potential neighbors. Considering it has only been in my lifetime that we have gone from whatever proceeded the Kecks, to a satellite capable of detecting extrasolar planets with earth-like masses and orbits (do I have that right?), it is extremely exciting to think about what might occur in the other 2/3rds of my expected life time.
It's really funny how much annoyance I just completely tolerate and deal with. Like my old car for instance: the doors didn't lock or unlock and the passenger door didn't open from the outside or very easily from the inside, (several years); the rear drivers side tire had two nails in it so I had to put air in it every time I drove (several months); the radio only worked within a few miles of a given radio station (years); blown speakers (years); water leaked in through the window and filled up the passenger side floor pan, leading it to rust (years); the headlights would usually turn off entirely if you went to high beams (though this issue was sporadic; a year or two). Nothing else really comes to mind. I do the same thing everywhere in my life, I have a big tupperware container with all my cloths in it (have had it since I moved out of my parents I think), so I have to dig through it to find the right cloths (like matching socks). Why do I ignore these problems like this? Because I can. Because they really don't bother me enough to do anything about them. I actually get used to them to the point where I don't even think of them as problems anymore.
"Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them" Thomas Jefferson
more anti-creationist youtube
Handicap the compliment.
3·12·09
A funny design for an estop circuit would be to have all the buttons simply short to ground, thus drawing too much current and flipping a breaker.
I just thought of a new word: penuis. It's a penis this is unusually intelligent.
Want to know what can actually succeed in angering me? (Cause we all know it's not that easy.)
mea culpa
"The nipples of Mother Hope have run dry."
Really, you don't want to know. You're better off with your imagination on this one.
The ability of people to stand by their convictions in the face of conflicting evidence baffles me.
3·16·09
How to spot a hidden religious agenda.
Surprise!
Supernormal stimuli.
Inversion of reasoning.
How might we go about quantifying 'goodness' in humans?
Could evolution be considered an efficient method of solving NP complete problems? Could I design an environment in which organisms evolved towards a solution for an NP-complete instance? Seems unlikely, mostly because non-optimal aspects pervade organic solutions. Could I come up with a more rigorous line of reasoning as to why this isn't possible?
3·19·09
How wrong do we have to be about physics for a steady state universe? Is there any bound on entropy increase? If the universe is computing something, is there really any entropy at all?
The terms culture of silence and conspiracy of silence which I linked to above really speak to me. I tend to attribute a lot of what I don't like about my own life or my own behavior to silly notions of appropriateness that our society has preserved and ingrained in us. It is especially weird to feel this way and yet not really have altered my behavior yet.
Because it's all the same to you.
Graceful exit.
3·1·09
It's hard to want to stay away.
His condition is such that he will never know about it.
Just in case.
"In one famous experiment, Brenda Milner, a Canadian psychologist, asked HM to remember the number 584 for as long as possible. To keep the number on the tip of his tongue, he used a complicated system, which he recounted to Milner:
"It's easy. You just remember 8. You see 5, 8, and 4 add to 17. You remember 8, subtract it from 17, and it leaves 9. Divide 9 in half and you get 5 and 4 and there you are: 584. Easy."
He concentrated on this elaborate mantra for several minutes. But as soon as he was distracted, the number dissolved. He couldn't even remember that he'd been asked to remember something."
I think the best governments (if they exist at all), should have strong, well funded campaigns to educate it's populace and raise awareness of the importance of unbridled public criticism of the government and it's policies. You ought to do everything you can to make me interested in what you are doing, and loud if I disagree. Communication is the key, and most of us don't even know how.
3·2·09
Listen, we are alone, we all suffer similar struggles in a similar amount of time; we all face the same gloomy unknown. It's not pleasant, but instead of arguing about the details of who's fault it is, or who should be praised for it, or the details of ancient superstitions and how they relate to the struggles we face today and in the future, maybe we could try investigating the problems we face, looking for solutions, and attempting to implement said solutions to make our lives more pleasurable, and everyone in the future as well.
3·8·09
Path dependence
I prefer to be in a constant state of crisis.
What, just by dumb luck we happen to have struck the magic method of science, and we developed so rapidly that no one could possibly compete with us.
Could you handle being threatened with a gun? For some reason I think that would hit me really hard. Imagine knowing you are a quarter of an inch away from death. A muscle spasm away from non-existence. I imagine that such an experience takes a costly toll from anyone who experiences it.
I'm really happy I met you.
Why do these things so strongly affect me? Stupid human beings, stupid brain.
Can god deliver a religion addict?
"There are so many powers of ten that I don't even know what english word to apply to it."
-Steven Weinberg (in part 2)
(Steven Weinberg Discussion (1/8) - Richard Dawkins)
The interview with Randolph Nesse is really good.
So Weinberg mentions the fluctuations in the fields (EM, or gravity, or any field), the calculated value is about 56 orders of magnitude larger than the observed value (the cosmological constant indicates a very low energy density for empty space, about a few barrels of oil in a volume the size of the earth). Is there a modification we can make to the theory of gravity that would change the observations to fit the calculated value? I think he also mentioned that the calculated value was mostly first order, and its possible higher order terms have a large influence, though it seems unlikely given the 56 magnitude.
I'm a macho physicist. Though I admit we may never know, and actually I would not be willing to put a likelihood on whether we ever will or not. But I can conceive of it all being understood, and I have glimpsed one possible approach that... crap, I didn't finish this sentence and I don't remember what I was thinking.
Hmm, are there any girls interested in helping me determine the spring constant of my mattress?
Awe
I didn't watch these yet.
Dawkins & Aubrey Manning
Dawkins at UC Berkley
Our existence doesn't really tell us anything about the probability of life arising, or intelligent life arising, or even the probability of life-supporting planets existing.
Okay, so about a month ago I came across this: US bribe insurgents to fight Al-Qaeda, which induced in me strong feelings of vindication, since I had been advocating bribery for quite some time before that. I have a new idea however! We must send them, THE INTERNET! And not just Iraqi insurgents, send it to anyone we are worried about. Quick, start mailing computers to North Korea, and set up a free ISP there. And maybe a small education program on how to use it. Who's gonna turn it down? When you go to sell this to the world leaders that hate us, just show them the stuff they'll like, Kim will love the streaming video stuff, we just won't show him anything he won't like.
"When life gives you lemons, just say fuck the lemons and bail."
"I like the hair. I wonder if the carpet matches her pubes."
(Paul Rudd's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
Culture of Silence.
3·9·09
I'm actually embarrassed to be an american. Less than half of us understand evolution. That's something virtually everyone should have known before middle school.
There is no other side.
A real movie about science, with the big bang through human evolution? That could be interesting. It could be wonderful. Could it be portrayed in logarithmic time?
I'm a little surprised, a little disturbed, and a little excited (happy) that Dawkins and Krauss, after mentioning Mike Huckabee's statement about running for president rather than a writing an 8th grade biology textbook, neither one of them mentioned my simple criticism of that statement which is: a prerequisite of presidential bids should be the ability to pass an 8th grade biology class, and denying evolution should warrant a failure of 8th grade biology.
Learn to talk like a physicist.
I want to find the Attenborough series I saw in 5th grade (because it is good).
Now I need to watch The Ascent of Man
Easily one of the most messed up things I have ever heard of.
PZ Meyers interviewed by Richard Dawkins. I don't think I watched more than the first few minutes yet, and I'm a little concerned that they were speaking really technically.
Lawrence Krauss and Dawkins.
3·10·09
We [humans] just launched a satellite that should be capable of detecting earth-like extrasolar planets—for the first time pointing us towards potential equival homes, which can more importantly be interpreted as potential neighbors. Considering it has only been in my lifetime that we have gone from whatever proceeded the Kecks, to a satellite capable of detecting extrasolar planets with earth-like masses and orbits (do I have that right?), it is extremely exciting to think about what might occur in the other 2/3rds of my expected life time.
It's really funny how much annoyance I just completely tolerate and deal with. Like my old car for instance: the doors didn't lock or unlock and the passenger door didn't open from the outside or very easily from the inside, (several years); the rear drivers side tire had two nails in it so I had to put air in it every time I drove (several months); the radio only worked within a few miles of a given radio station (years); blown speakers (years); water leaked in through the window and filled up the passenger side floor pan, leading it to rust (years); the headlights would usually turn off entirely if you went to high beams (though this issue was sporadic; a year or two). Nothing else really comes to mind. I do the same thing everywhere in my life, I have a big tupperware container with all my cloths in it (have had it since I moved out of my parents I think), so I have to dig through it to find the right cloths (like matching socks). Why do I ignore these problems like this? Because I can. Because they really don't bother me enough to do anything about them. I actually get used to them to the point where I don't even think of them as problems anymore.
"Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them" Thomas Jefferson
more anti-creationist youtube
Handicap the compliment.
3·12·09
A funny design for an estop circuit would be to have all the buttons simply short to ground, thus drawing too much current and flipping a breaker.
I just thought of a new word: penuis. It's a penis this is unusually intelligent.
Want to know what can actually succeed in angering me? (Cause we all know it's not that easy.)
mea culpa
"The nipples of Mother Hope have run dry."
Really, you don't want to know. You're better off with your imagination on this one.
The ability of people to stand by their convictions in the face of conflicting evidence baffles me.
3·16·09
How to spot a hidden religious agenda.
Surprise!
Supernormal stimuli.
Inversion of reasoning.
How might we go about quantifying 'goodness' in humans?
Could evolution be considered an efficient method of solving NP complete problems? Could I design an environment in which organisms evolved towards a solution for an NP-complete instance? Seems unlikely, mostly because non-optimal aspects pervade organic solutions. Could I come up with a more rigorous line of reasoning as to why this isn't possible?
3·19·09
How wrong do we have to be about physics for a steady state universe? Is there any bound on entropy increase? If the universe is computing something, is there really any entropy at all?
The terms culture of silence and conspiracy of silence which I linked to above really speak to me. I tend to attribute a lot of what I don't like about my own life or my own behavior to silly notions of appropriateness that our society has preserved and ingrained in us. It is especially weird to feel this way and yet not really have altered my behavior yet.
Because it's all the same to you.
Graceful exit.
3/01/2009
Everything goes to Ruin
1·15·09
Was alternative music named so with intentional irony? Because it seems ironic now that a genre so ubiquitous (at least from my perspective) is called 'alternative'.
1·18·09
Beethoven's immortal beloved.
"In the way with A., everything goes to ruin."
-Ludwig van Beethoven
"Frank, give me the gun, we're in a hurry."
"Where is it?"
"It's in your hand."
I'd like to win your favor.
Why is it that my mouth is not allowed to say certain things, but my fingers can?
1·20·09
Big day eve.
"With no fall back for my disappointment, this is..."
"Don't investigate. Over."
"What is shaking?"
"Do you find the weather satisfying?"
"Everything we stole everything we broke everything we bought nothing ever stays the same."
Brace for impact.
1·22·09
Was there ever a moment I could have saved us? Or even a time I could have rescued you?
"Yo Holmes, we're looking for a microwave."
1·26·09
I'm sorry that I'm a pompous, arrogant, conceited, narcissistic asshole, but thats just what I am.
We're always going to want just a little bit more.
1·28·09
Defeat is impossible.
"I hope Satan has a nice colon, cause that's where you'll be living."
Precautionary principle.
Delope.
Throw away my fire.
Truel
Long distance mice.
And where they came from.
Beautiful.
1·29·09
I'll need your mother's maiden name, and her bank account numbers.
Your love will be, safe with me
Compare and contrast:
"So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it." - Bertrand Russell
with
"A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten." —Arthur Schopenhauer
2·1·09
"Well we're safe for now, thank goodness we're in a bowling ally."
"How'd you get to be so smart all the sudden?
-I had a good day."
Excessive Prominence.
FUCK ALL OF YOU. Any rational being should recognize how completely fucked up circumcision is, male or female.
2·2·09
A new name for everything.
Composition B
If I ever do have kids, I really need to remember to teach them to remember numbers both forwards and backwards.
Free the Facts!
Running the Numbers.
Laughter is a state of mind.
"Whoever invented rope is an a-hole."
Today I learned that more Japanese-Americans (who had American citizenship) died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than did in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11th 2001.
"On 8 August 1945, Albert Camus addressed the bombing of Hiroshima in an editorial in the French newspaper Combat:
'Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests[...] This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason.' "
Between Hell and Reason.
Everything must be put to fire.
Exception to the rule.
Willing hands.
In the meantime.
A Soviet attack! The business is ours!
2·5·09
No, I won't wait forever.
Life evolved to use a four symbol code of length three, called a codon, to represent amino acids used in the construction of proteins. Could it be that this architecture is somehow more advantageous than say a two symbol code of length five? Or a five symbol code of length two? Codons only code for 20 amino acids, and the remaining 44 combinations are apparently redundant, which might benefit reliability, could this architecture benefit us in our machines as well? Oo, and 8 of the 20 codons are uninfluenced by their third digit...
UAG
UAA
UGA
We don't want a solution because we like the problem.
Revolution insurance.
emotional lability
"I'll finally be able to gay marry a stem cell created illegal alien."
-Jon Stewart
"Live life abundantly"
Pretty things.
Oops.
"Oh you're longing for what you love. Longing for what you love."
We're falling for our own trick.
I will stay for this last transformation.
The religious ought to take note: if you want to start a war between religion and science, fine, bring it on. But honestly, your best strategy for post-war existence is to not sound so crazy, because science will inevitably be right (that is how science works, it replaces any errors it finds with more correct explanations, and in principle it never has any qualms about 'upgrading' to better explanations), and whatever bullshit you spew in defense will only determine what things the survivors are most skeptical of.
Forgetting this means everything.
Someone who will keep an eye open when you want to close yours.
"Well, you played with your emotions and your emotions got the best of you."
Polite euphemism.
Flip you for it.
2·8·09
Science is the poetry of reality.
"I can't die now, I haven't been happy yet."
2·12·09
"We communicate in questions."
This was the worst emergency christmas ever.
2·13·09
Slow down you might be perfect.
Hold on you might be worth it.
Slow down they don't deserve it.
Slow down I haven't learned yet.
Well I miss you my friend.
Will I see your face again?
2·14·09
Smile like you mean it for once.
"I'm willing to start at the bottom and infiltrate my way up."
2·15·09
The strong will take care of the weak.
We communicate in questions.
2·16·09
Circle map.
Lub dub. I need to make more artwork. Lub dub. Involving these things. Lub dub.
What's your worst fear?
Any might be too many.
2·18·09
I'm not good at it, but I can do it well.
We're in the same spot, we're miles apart. I think I'm glad that it's over. I almost remember.
"The past seems prettier through a rearview mirror."
This is pretty awesome.
2·19·09
It's not enough to be complete?
2·20·09
Circle of confusion. I just like the phrase.
Geometry is about the distance between things.
Here are some science oriented tattoos. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
"befuddled by anoxia"
2·22·09
I just realized I am faithful in the 'free market' model as applied to the economic relationships between countries. Our country and their country must agree on what it trades, pays, how it is safe or not, etc.
"only a moment or two of brutal madness"
The plot seemed to trouble children who watched it in test screenings, essentially afflicting the comfortable, rather than comforting the afflicted.
Unbelievable ants.
2·24·09
Nullpunktenergie (German word that resulted in 'zero point energy')
2·25·09
T-shirt idea:
"proud participant of Big Science conspiracy"
I heart death.
2·26·09
I can see the direct result of my effort.
2·28·09
The fitness function for humans is our emotions and feelings! Because EVERYTHING is a feeling.
Respectfully, go fuck yourself.
I don't want to be there when you fall.
And do we have just this one chance that's all?
Was alternative music named so with intentional irony? Because it seems ironic now that a genre so ubiquitous (at least from my perspective) is called 'alternative'.
1·18·09
Beethoven's immortal beloved.
"In the way with A., everything goes to ruin."
-Ludwig van Beethoven
"Frank, give me the gun, we're in a hurry."
"Where is it?"
"It's in your hand."
I'd like to win your favor.
Why is it that my mouth is not allowed to say certain things, but my fingers can?
1·20·09
Big day eve.
"With no fall back for my disappointment, this is..."
"Don't investigate. Over."
"What is shaking?"
"Do you find the weather satisfying?"
"Everything we stole everything we broke everything we bought nothing ever stays the same."
Brace for impact.
1·22·09
Was there ever a moment I could have saved us? Or even a time I could have rescued you?
"Yo Holmes, we're looking for a microwave."
1·26·09
I'm sorry that I'm a pompous, arrogant, conceited, narcissistic asshole, but thats just what I am.
We're always going to want just a little bit more.
1·28·09
Defeat is impossible.
"I hope Satan has a nice colon, cause that's where you'll be living."
Precautionary principle.
Delope.
Throw away my fire.
Truel
Long distance mice.
And where they came from.
Beautiful.
1·29·09
I'll need your mother's maiden name, and her bank account numbers.
Your love will be, safe with me
Compare and contrast:
"So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it." - Bertrand Russell
with
"A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten." —Arthur Schopenhauer
2·1·09
"Well we're safe for now, thank goodness we're in a bowling ally."
"How'd you get to be so smart all the sudden?
-I had a good day."
Excessive Prominence.
FUCK ALL OF YOU. Any rational being should recognize how completely fucked up circumcision is, male or female.
2·2·09
A new name for everything.
Composition B
If I ever do have kids, I really need to remember to teach them to remember numbers both forwards and backwards.
Free the Facts!
Running the Numbers.
Laughter is a state of mind.
"Whoever invented rope is an a-hole."
Today I learned that more Japanese-Americans (who had American citizenship) died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than did in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11th 2001.
"On 8 August 1945, Albert Camus addressed the bombing of Hiroshima in an editorial in the French newspaper Combat:
'Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests[...] This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason.' "
Between Hell and Reason.
Everything must be put to fire.
Exception to the rule.
Willing hands.
In the meantime.
A Soviet attack! The business is ours!
2·5·09
No, I won't wait forever.
Life evolved to use a four symbol code of length three, called a codon, to represent amino acids used in the construction of proteins. Could it be that this architecture is somehow more advantageous than say a two symbol code of length five? Or a five symbol code of length two? Codons only code for 20 amino acids, and the remaining 44 combinations are apparently redundant, which might benefit reliability, could this architecture benefit us in our machines as well? Oo, and 8 of the 20 codons are uninfluenced by their third digit...
UAG
UAA
UGA
We don't want a solution because we like the problem.
Revolution insurance.
emotional lability
"I'll finally be able to gay marry a stem cell created illegal alien."
-Jon Stewart
"Live life abundantly"
Pretty things.
Oops.
"Oh you're longing for what you love. Longing for what you love."
We're falling for our own trick.
I will stay for this last transformation.
The religious ought to take note: if you want to start a war between religion and science, fine, bring it on. But honestly, your best strategy for post-war existence is to not sound so crazy, because science will inevitably be right (that is how science works, it replaces any errors it finds with more correct explanations, and in principle it never has any qualms about 'upgrading' to better explanations), and whatever bullshit you spew in defense will only determine what things the survivors are most skeptical of.
Forgetting this means everything.
Someone who will keep an eye open when you want to close yours.
"Well, you played with your emotions and your emotions got the best of you."
Polite euphemism.
Flip you for it.
2·8·09
Science is the poetry of reality.
"I can't die now, I haven't been happy yet."
2·12·09
"We communicate in questions."
This was the worst emergency christmas ever.
2·13·09
Slow down you might be perfect.
Hold on you might be worth it.
Slow down they don't deserve it.
Slow down I haven't learned yet.
Well I miss you my friend.
Will I see your face again?
2·14·09
Smile like you mean it for once.
"I'm willing to start at the bottom and infiltrate my way up."
2·15·09
The strong will take care of the weak.
We communicate in questions.
2·16·09
Circle map.
Lub dub. I need to make more artwork. Lub dub. Involving these things. Lub dub.
What's your worst fear?
Any might be too many.
2·18·09
I'm not good at it, but I can do it well.
We're in the same spot, we're miles apart. I think I'm glad that it's over. I almost remember.
"The past seems prettier through a rearview mirror."
This is pretty awesome.
2·19·09
It's not enough to be complete?
2·20·09
Circle of confusion. I just like the phrase.
Geometry is about the distance between things.
Here are some science oriented tattoos. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
"befuddled by anoxia"
2·22·09
I just realized I am faithful in the 'free market' model as applied to the economic relationships between countries. Our country and their country must agree on what it trades, pays, how it is safe or not, etc.
"only a moment or two of brutal madness"
The plot seemed to trouble children who watched it in test screenings, essentially afflicting the comfortable, rather than comforting the afflicted.
Unbelievable ants.
2·24·09
Nullpunktenergie (German word that resulted in 'zero point energy')
2·25·09
T-shirt idea:
"proud participant of Big Science conspiracy"
I heart death.
2·26·09
I can see the direct result of my effort.
2·28·09
The fitness function for humans is our emotions and feelings! Because EVERYTHING is a feeling.
Respectfully, go fuck yourself.
I don't want to be there when you fall.
And do we have just this one chance that's all?
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