11·21·09
"Metaphysical bagage."
The only reason to do anything ever is because it pleases you. (Or because some extended effect of it will please you.)
I pay the price in ill-conceived laughter.
Flowers it is.
11·23·09
How does one go about confronting a delusion? If someone suffers from a delusion, how might someone else confront them? What if the are delusional about everything? How might one recognize self delusion?
How does one differentiate between the sensation of deja vu, versus actually experiencing something they have experienced before? Does AJ ever experience deja vu? My own interpretation of deja vu is that it is a simple dating error in our brain.
11·28·09
REM dreaming may be simulations.
Clearly dreaming (both REM and non-REM) must be evolutionary selected. (Otherwise it wouldn't persist both throughout our species and throughout many species.)
11·30·09
"knowing, that you don't know, is the most, essential step, to knowing, you know?"
La terre est bleu comme une orange Jamais une erreur, les mots ne mentent pas
(The Earth is blue like an orange, never a mistake words do not lie.)
12·1·09
Science is a tool, method, or process, or collection of these things, that distill information out of the noise. It's a system of doubting. Science is a system of doubting information, and testing it, validating it, always trying as hard as possible to invalidate information, to disprove it. In this way, it is a reliable process for distilling truth out of the nonsense of noise that pervades human thinking.
12·2·09
A good amount to think about.
Short-circuited compassion unit.
Do double contractions exist? E.g., might'ven't, instead of might have not, might've not, or might haven't? Is one of these more correct than the others?
12·3·09
You prove it's true.
You prove it's not true.
You prove it can't be proven.
you prove it can't be disproven.
You prove it's ill-defined.
It's sufficient to happen.
It's necessary to happen.
It's both sufficient and necessary.
It's neither sufficient nor necessary.
Immediately he recognized only four possibilities: either he was mistaken, or everyone else was. Or they were liars, or, most dreadfully, it was hallucination, and he was therefore mad.
It is necessary and not sufficient.
It is sufficient and not necessary.
A
B
A and B
Not A and not B
A and not B
Not A and B
It is either sufficient or necessary.
It is either sufficient or necessary, but not both.
It is sufficient or it is not necessary.
It is necessary or it is not sufficient.
Porch on cat a is there.
Reason is the only path to reality.
Science is our only hope.
The only road leading to absolute certainty.
Of course it appeals to my self nature, being an overtly cautious fellow.
"My curiosity barely exceeded the fear of getting caught."
"This moment marked a terrible disappointment. …but ignited the rest of my life."
The greatest nightmare, of madness, threatens the considerate.
"Were it not for the hope of reason. …The vision of a totally logical world I had glimpsed in mathematics."
12·5·09
Hot, three-way oval action. Oval on oval action.
12·8·09
Privacy is such a strange issue to me; I tend to think I might be an intensely private person, but I believe that is largely due to me not knowing where other people's barriers lie, and fearing that overstepping barriers of personal privacy would be highly offensive to most people. This is severe hypocrisy for me, since I tend to be very difficult to offend, and would not find personal questions offensive in any way imaginable. (Does it count that if I don't want to reveal something asked of me, I would simply explain I don't want to reveal that? Or does that count as taking offense?).
I tend to have a real fear of girls that I am very attracted to. And this isn't always the case, I'm fairly certain the fear is directly related to how interested in me they seem; if it is very obvious that a girl is interested in me, and I actually notice, (a hugely improbable qualifier), then I am much more able to interact meaningfully, or express my own feelings. If, alternatively, a girl is at all ambiguous about her feelings towards me, I tend to actively suppress all expression of feelings, not just towards her, but towards anything, probably in an attempt to not offend. (Should that be "possibly in an attempt..."?)
I am constantly consciously cautious with respect to offending other's opinions, what a tragedy.
There is a lot of debate among various types of atheists (and critics of atheism), about how honest we should be, or how vocal we should be, or how "offensive" we should be. I am a "new atheist", which means I think we should be as honest and vocal as possible, and I believe the charge of offensiveness is misguided—the consequence of the privileged position that religion has enjoyed for far too long. As has been said with increasing frequency lately, criticizing another person's beliefs, or questioning their reasons for those beliefs, is not considered offensive in politics, or science, or most other areas of our lives (e.g. movies, music, books). The religious however are excused to get all riled up simply if an atheist mentions god might not exist, or that one can be good without god (google "atheist bus campaign" for more info). The tragedy of this situation is that atheists (like many theists, and apologists from both sides, I imagine), are so vocal precisely because they are convinced this is the most effective strategy to improving the world. My own experience with this originated in learning some history of science, specifically about Giardano Bruno, a contemporary of Galileo.
Bruno was burned alive at the stake, for merely suggested that the earth might not be the center of the solar system. They cut his tongue out as a sign of mercy. They probably would have spared his life, if he had only recanted. 22 years later they banned Galileo's book (placing it on the list of books that if read, would damn you to hell for eternity). Later they forced Galileo to recant, but he remained under house arrest in the later years of his life. His book was not taken off the "burn in hell" list for 200 years. An apology from the church only came in 1992! This institution, the catholic church, has done incalculable harm to the human race, and it is unforgivable. We can forgive the individuals, we can help them recover, we can free the masses, but the institution itself, the traditions and doctrines, should not be celebrated, but abhorred. It was this history specifically that motivated me to vocalize my criticisms of religion. Imagine, this is only the tip of the iceberg, we don't know how many geniuses were murdered over the eons by self-proclaimed authorities suffering from the same superstitions as nearly everyone else of their time. People cite all the great art and music created in the name of music over the last millennia. Though there are many good, valid arguments to describe why religion cannot take sole credit, we must ask, what might humanity have accomplished if religious authorities had not murdered the most creative, most insightful and most bold thinkers of any given era? And although this is a bit off topic, can anyone give a compelling argument why we, the new atheists, should not speak the truth? The reality of this situation is that we are not being mean, we are not going out of our way to offend, we are most definitely not violent, not on a personal, physically threading level, nor on a terrorist level (as many religious groups are). Given that we are merely asserting the truth, why should we stop again?
12·9·09
This is so sad. And scary.
Seems like a good idea.
Atheist nations are more peaceful.
Might atheists be distrusted because they are simply unknown, as this article suggests? Or is there more to it?
"Home is wherever I'm with you."
Neat.
12·10·09
"Hey Goldman Sachs, put down the crack pipe!"
12·11·09
"Love of color sound and words, is it a blessing or a curse."
What is it about humans that causes us to side on sets of issues? I can understand religious influences, for instance, as in-group behavior. And I can understand scientific consensus as a set of convergent opinions arrived at through independent lines of reasoning. But how is it that someone who isn't very religious, sides with the typical base set of religious beliefs? Case in point, Joe G, who buys both the intelligent design argument and the global-warming is a hoax conspiracy theory.
Why is it that the uniformed feel so justified in faking their qualifications as if it will convince the informed? For instance, creationists will sometimes claim they were formerly atheists, and then were convinced. Don't they understand how frequently atheists originated from some sort of religion? That it is the non-believers who have typically considered both sides in detail, not the believers?
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
—Victor Stenger
"I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous ideas."
—Johann Hari
12·13·09
A.C. Grayling is so awesome. If you want to watch the whole thing, you can wander through that list on youtube, or you can see it here as well.
12/13/2009
11/21/2009
Kissed and Often
10·13·09
Asymptomatic
The realization that an innate optimism frequently overpowers my rationality has triggered a re-evaluation of certain conclusions. I have often wondered how much modern disease is a result of our vastly modified life styles, could it be that bodies evolved walking on soft ground living in trees or caves and spending nearly all their time securing meals perhaps struggle in a world filled will hard surfaces, beds and supermarkets? Could depression be so common because we're breathing different air, walking on different surfaces, eating different organisms, and spending our time differently than we did 50,000 years ago? 500,000 years ago? 5,000,000? There are a lot of zeros there... But now I'm realizing, we have toppled natural selection (thank goodness!), and while that is an important accomplishment (most of us would not be here otherwise), it also means we may carry many detrimental traits (this is actually true of any organism). Furthermore, is there a reason to expect evolution to select for happy creatures in general? Happiness certainly is a useful trait to have, but steady and unwavering happiness? Probably not, since unhappiness becomes a motivator often times. Actually, could the issue be that we live in a world where when unhappy, there is no clear direction for improvement? That is, if I am depressed, there is no clear cause (like say losing someone important, which would naturally depress anyone), and without a clear cause, the mechanism "motivate -> do something -> achieve happiness" can't work, since there is no clear middle step "do something" to re-obtain happiness. Maybe this is why people think drugs are such a great solution; they are such an easy path home, especially if some fancy drug company or fancy doctor tell you it'll solve the problem. Or maybe I'm totally wrong again, please, no one should take my thoughts too seriously. Maybe I should put that disclaimer at the top.
"I'm being told there's no one talking to me right now."
Someone out there is awesome.
We are all related.
Sarah Silverman figured out how to feed the world!
What makes this feel good is that I don't know where it goes.
"I'm not the enemy." — "Then who are you?"
So you're calling god a liar.
We've made a mess of it.
On the floor, listening to Beethoven.
per bit: ∆S ≥ k_b ln(2)
10·15·09
Did Mary commit adultery with god? Or was it nonconsensual? In which case, did god rape Mary? I guess adultery makes less sense than rape, since there is a commandment forbidding the former, but none pertaining to the latter. Jesus was a bastard! And god was a deadbeat dad!
Because you stood still.
"Don't act so innocent—I've seen you pound your fist into the earth."
The Dose Makes the Poison.
I was thinking about any adult who stands out as an expert, has practiced their field more than most non-experts can imagine. I was first thinking about how this applies to mathematics and science, but then it became clear that this really does apply to any area of expertise.
It's always your friends that hate you the most.
I've mentioned before that I don't believe egalitarianism nor meritocracy to be the ultimate solution, but that rather a mix of the two is required. I should have listed the benefits and drawbacks to the two viewpoints also. Egalitarianism satisfies one's sense of compassion for their fellow humankind (or even animal, or life-kind), but it makes one susceptible to fraud; egalitarianism on the other hand resolves the fraud issue (assuming an infallible testing procedure), but leaves the least-qualified, the most unfortunate with nothing to hope for. In fact, the very idea of inherited fortune, or more broadly, the idea that one can be born into certain advantages or disadvantages (which vary wildly: money, fame, resources, societal pressures/expectations/leniencies, cultural bias, etc.), generates much discomfort with the idea that one will be judged by merits alone—it may even be direct inspiration for many egalitarian feelings.
dashing
10·17·09
Deluded in each other's favor.
Q: can we think of a method to add up the world lines of a gluon in such a way as to explain why gluons are always bound to one another or to quarks? Then that would be very analogous to the proposal that the Higgs is interfering with it's creation. The difficulty we have is it is too easy to think about it being some future event that is "traveling backwards in time" to cause trouble. But what we should be thinking is that the creation of such a particle (a free Higgs that is), generates world lines with the property that when added up, they destructively interfere in such a way as to destroy the world lines that lead to the creation of the free Higgs. Is the idea that the phenomena spans time any more counter-intuitive than the idea that a phenomena can span space? After all, entanglement was impossibly counter-intuitive when it was first hypothesized, but it has become a well-established phenomena. The challenge we face with proposing a "temporally-non-local" mechanism is that it is by it's very nature, exceedingly difficult to verify. (Also, intuitively, it offends our sense of causality even more than entanglement did, though ultimately we can now see how entanglement does not violate causality, as it first appeared to—it may be that this temporal mechanism is resolved similarly, through deeper understanding.)
What is the link between one-way functions and the halting problem? and entropy? and Laplace's Demon? and NP? (11·21·09 update: Seth mentioned that if P=NP you can commit wholesale macroscopic violations of the Second Law, therefore we can interpret the lack of a bacterium that does this to be further evidence of P \neq NP.)
How could he send her away?
"It's... inhuman, to be so cold."
"Today you don't mean it."
She can tell.
There is more than one part to each of us.
A mind divided.
"We should start from the top, and look at what we've got."
"Some, are mothers. And some people, dance."
Everybody feels that way.
I want to teach useful things, whereby we adopt the definition of useful to be something which increases total joy, rather than something which has practical application.
Delere Auctorem Rerum Ut Universum Infinitum Noscas.
(Destroy the author of things in order to understand the infinite universe.)
10·20·09
Get doomed.
"Suck on my sweet tooth til I'm sore."
"People do things right now all the time."
Is it impossible to make a computer curious?
"Just say what you're thinking."
10·22·09
"Information wants to be free"
Don't be the only one left without a chair when the music stops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMCf7SNUb-Q
http://wohba.com/2005/10/giant-smoke-rings.html
10·24·09
Do you think as cameras become more and more common, the difficulty in looking at the camera, rather than at the person holding the camera, will lessen? Will people who look at the camera be naturally selected? (More likely sexually selected.)
A Moment of Stillness
Thought & imagination into gift giving.
Brace for impact.
"I'm pulling back the curtain. I want to meet the wizard."
"Discovering the object of the game, is, the object of the game."
"Crystals of appetite."
10·26·09
"And it was perfect. Until the phone started ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing off."
I just realized suddenly, that the opposition to nuclear remains steadfast, and although I (and many others) consider it an extremely viable alternative to coal, (perhaps even the most viable), the resistance may simply be too great for it to ever come back.
Fight for it.
10·27·09
"Because you like to remember her."
How does layering change information content? For instance alphabet => words => sentences => paragraphs => chapters. Or DNA => amino acids => proteins (is that right? or is it DNA => genes => proteins? or am I even more wrong?)
a-z = 26
so 26 1 letter words
26^2 2 letter words
and so on.
Let's assume we don't often see words more than 8 letters long.
I looked up the average number of words per sentence, found this interesting article, and will take the number 18 as as an average for words per sentence. Assuming a uniform distribution for the length of words (we could improve by researching the actual distribution of word lengths), how many different sentences does that give us?
"Move beyond your need for unmoldy dishes."
Germ cells.
11·01·09
Time hates art.
"Something remarkable happens."
"It doesn't confirm your goosebumps."
I think I need to construct positive reinforcement in my life to alter my behavior. That would be clever.
"There is no pattern to find."
Gardening.
A parallax measurement of the galactic black hole puts it at about 7800 light years from here.
We're definitely all screwed.
11·3·09
"Shoot first, and then check to see if it's was one of your friends or a bird."
-Dick Cheney.
Squeeky clean.
11·4·09
Look no further.
11·5·09
So I was thinking: CMB = black body. Black holes -> Hawking radiation = black body. Olber's paradox = in an infinite universe, all lines of sight end on the surface of a star, thus no night sky thus universe is not infinite. But with black holes… some lines of sight could end on a black body radiator… which would look like the CMB! To go further, wouldn't gravitational effects redshift the light?
It seems to me that somewhere between redshift, dark matter, dark energy, inflation, quantum vacuum fluctuations, black holes & Hawking radiation, the CMB, Olber's paradox, galaxy rotation curves and the large scale structure of the universe, there is a better answer than big bang. But it seems that I need to know way more physics and mathematics to convince anyone.
11·9·09
"We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are."
Hubba hubba hubba.
11·10·09
"The slightest lapse of judgement."
eleven ten nine, it's like a countdown!
11·11·09
Well, which is it? Are you the typical American? Or the oppressed minority? You can't have it both ways.
"Science is interesting, and if you disagree you can fuck off."
NPR story about you have no right not to be framed?
How awesome, right?
Wait, what is the moral?
Arguments that morality owes it's existence to religion are easily dismissed by simply empathizing with Abraham during that time in which he believed god had commanded him to sacrifice Isaac—if upon considering such a situation one realizes that no plan, no king, no supreme being can give a good reason to murder one's own child (indeed because no such reason exists), then one is moral; if, on the other hand, one agrees to blindly follow the voices in their head, one is certifiably insane, and would best avoid harming society or themselves by seeking external, REAL people who want to help.
noetic
nous
Amalekites
Wilson want's a foundation for relative morality. So I will provide it to him. I will describe it in the narrative of how I resolved it for myself. You already understand that the view holds that there is no supreme power in the universe that "cares" about humans (or any other creature). I asked myself at some point, several years ago, what does morals mean to the moon? (The question was sort of a natural extension to environmentalist statements about what was good and bad for the earth.) The question can further be extended to even less important objects, as the moon does play a role in life as we know it (though it may be that life was and is possible without it.) What if Andromeda didn't exist? It would likely have no influence on humans (at least not for a few billion more years.) Okay, off track, sorry. So, I began thinking that a more correct statement would be to talk about what is good and bad for the earth (or moon, or andromeda) in terms of Me, or Us, or My Family, or My Neighbors, or My Country, or My Species, or the Animal Kingdom, or Life in general. Of course, depending on which one of these we choose we get different answers, radically different answers in some cases. Especially in the case of countries, where the impression of limited resources generates a kind of anxiety that frequently interferes with clear thinking. Now we might ask, why should I choose one basis of concern rather than another? Why choose to care about anyone other than me, or maybe family or country? (Sadly, many people, religious or not, seem to extend it no further than country.) Let's first establish natural reasons why you might choose to care about your extended society (that is, everyone to which you directly depend on; allow for an protectionism view of society for the time being.) It's related to your question: "why would an atheist care" about the genocide of the Amalekites? Because humans are one of many species that have developed social structures, and have evolved to become entirely reliant upon them. Individuals that lack the traits required to maintain a stable social structure would either destroy the society, or be ejected from it (the latter occurring if the society has developed the tools to find and expel those individuals.) So we need our society to exist, and even more to prosper. Obviously this can be extended through global trade to include all of the developed world—can we extend it to include the countries without goods or resources we want? Yes. First note that our prosperity is not a zero-sum game. No one need lose for others to win—you can build me a house while I grow your food, we don't need one of us to end up on the streets. Second, note that teamwork has a beneficial effect, as do technological advancement and education. The more highly educated we are, the more productive and prosperous we can be. The more people you can get to help with your work, the more you can get done. There is also the argument that compassion, a natural product of the aforementioned societal dependencies, can be extended beyond it's natural origins. This leads into the explanation of how we can expand our moral concerns beyond that of all humans, to include all animals or even all life. I'm not arguing that humans and animals have the same rights (I don't agree with that, but some people do), but I would argue that there are two obvious paths to concerning ourselves with animal well-being. The first is utility, we have the foresight to understand that taking care of our environment is of utmost importance to our long-term survival as a species, (this foresight is a uniquely human trait.) Second is again compassion—we have a strong sense of empathy, one that has probably outgrown it's natural causes. It is these principles that allow us to make moral decisions, and acknowledging that is of paramount importance to resolve new moral questions for which we have no precedent, that we now face due to the increases in our population and technology. Stem cells, global warming, genetic engineering and screening, gene therapy are some of the most recent moral questions we have been faced with, some of which may have no clear resolution yet. But what we DON'T need are allegorical stories and superstition from the desert goat herders of millennia past, who knew nothing of the world or all of it's boundless beauty. We need rational, thought-out discourse and debate. A well informed and educated public (if we want to preserve democracy), not bound to the morals of ancient ancestors but free to understand morality through their hearts and minds. And will everyone agree on what base to use? No. Of course not. There are the PETA activists who seem to think that animals deserve perfectly equal (sometimes even more) rights than humans, there are the patriots (read: nationalists) who seem to think this or that country needs to do what is in it's own best interest, and there are sociopaths who lack the notion of societal concerns all together. But with Religious claims masking all those natural feelings and developed thoughts on morality, you end up with a lot of people claiming (and believing themselves) to be morally right, correct, perfect, generating a false confidence (an arrogance) in their actions, and that has lead to untold suffering throughout history (see: catholic sexual abuse settlements, inquisition, and ongoing african AIDS epidemic.) Weinberg said it best, "with or without religion, you'd have good people doing good things and bad people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
And fine tuning is a terrible argument, because our understanding of the universe is so enormously incomplete, and the result of an arbitrary universe so entirely intractable, we simply can't claim that this universe is …wait, I'm getting off track.
For two reasons.
First we don't know what the underlying rules that make this universe the way it is. Much like the properties of numbers, the universe may simply be necessarily this way (this I believe is what Einstein meant when he asked "if god had a choice in making the world").
Second, if we assume that this universe could have been different, we don't know what effect that has on the likelihood that intelligent life (such as ourselves) would emerge. That is, we have no clue how changing the rules would affect the resulting universe. This is in part due to the unclarity of the rules (that is, we don't know if we've got the right rules yet, or how right the ones we have are, or even if there is a real set of rules. Worse still, we'll never really be sure if we've got the right rules or not.) But also because given a set of rules, computing the outcome is practically impossible (at least as far as human computing power is concerned.)
Because we can't know the rules of the universe with certainty, nor can we ever really know the likelihood or unlikelihood of them occurring in the way they did, we really can't make statements about how probable or improbable the tuning of the universe is. All we can really say is that if these rules we believe are valid, were changed, that these basic consequences would result (such as stars would not work the way we know them to.) This does not exclude them giving rise to life in a way alternative to the way we know.
My personal hunch is that we will find laws of the universe that will be very similar to the the laws of numbers—that indeed the universe did not have a choice in it's properties.
11·17·09
Oh no, don't tell me what comes next.
Oh no, let me make up the rest.
While in the shower, moments ago, intending to expand upon my hypothesis of consciousness, I stumbled across something else: a hypothesis of imagination. I had been thinking that the concept of consciousness should include some ability to simulate (basically hijack our audio/visual/etc. "feelings" without those senses actually being triggered), thus you can imagine what this might sound like if read by me, or someone with a british accent, or something else. (Or maybe you can't, it's unclear why/how we develop the ability to do such things, or whether or not we all develop all these abilities). You might be able to imagine what a pink elephant would look like, (maybe you can't even help thinking about it when it's mentioned here). But half way through this reasoning it started to seem as if simulation was more the domain of imagination than consciousness. Now, I don't know where the popular concepts of imagination and consciousness might overlap (or not), I'm slightly inclined to label imagination as a subset of consciousness, but it really doesn't matter. All I want to assert is that consciousness consists of the ability to observe computation as it occurs, and imagination consists of the ability to simulate something representative of reality. I suppose the interesting part of this idea might be that imagination doesn't require consciousness to exist, but the two are intimately linked—if a creature developed the neural circuitry required to simulate it's environment (which would be very useful for survival, to help predict which actions to take, based on the simulation, to produce the most favorable outcome in reality, based on which simulation produced the most favorable outcome.)
11·19·09
"Yes doctor, I'll get the tools from the shed."
"Scallops musta got 'em."
"Commencing intestinal flash flood."
After learning more about closed time like curves today, a new question comes to light: how would one differentiate between time travel and not?
"You should be kissed and often. And by someone who knows how."
Asymptomatic
The realization that an innate optimism frequently overpowers my rationality has triggered a re-evaluation of certain conclusions. I have often wondered how much modern disease is a result of our vastly modified life styles, could it be that bodies evolved walking on soft ground living in trees or caves and spending nearly all their time securing meals perhaps struggle in a world filled will hard surfaces, beds and supermarkets? Could depression be so common because we're breathing different air, walking on different surfaces, eating different organisms, and spending our time differently than we did 50,000 years ago? 500,000 years ago? 5,000,000? There are a lot of zeros there... But now I'm realizing, we have toppled natural selection (thank goodness!), and while that is an important accomplishment (most of us would not be here otherwise), it also means we may carry many detrimental traits (this is actually true of any organism). Furthermore, is there a reason to expect evolution to select for happy creatures in general? Happiness certainly is a useful trait to have, but steady and unwavering happiness? Probably not, since unhappiness becomes a motivator often times. Actually, could the issue be that we live in a world where when unhappy, there is no clear direction for improvement? That is, if I am depressed, there is no clear cause (like say losing someone important, which would naturally depress anyone), and without a clear cause, the mechanism "motivate -> do something -> achieve happiness" can't work, since there is no clear middle step "do something" to re-obtain happiness. Maybe this is why people think drugs are such a great solution; they are such an easy path home, especially if some fancy drug company or fancy doctor tell you it'll solve the problem. Or maybe I'm totally wrong again, please, no one should take my thoughts too seriously. Maybe I should put that disclaimer at the top.
"I'm being told there's no one talking to me right now."
Someone out there is awesome.
We are all related.
Sarah Silverman figured out how to feed the world!
What makes this feel good is that I don't know where it goes.
"I'm not the enemy." — "Then who are you?"
So you're calling god a liar.
We've made a mess of it.
On the floor, listening to Beethoven.
per bit: ∆S ≥ k_b ln(2)
10·15·09
Did Mary commit adultery with god? Or was it nonconsensual? In which case, did god rape Mary? I guess adultery makes less sense than rape, since there is a commandment forbidding the former, but none pertaining to the latter. Jesus was a bastard! And god was a deadbeat dad!
Because you stood still.
"Don't act so innocent—I've seen you pound your fist into the earth."
The Dose Makes the Poison.
I was thinking about any adult who stands out as an expert, has practiced their field more than most non-experts can imagine. I was first thinking about how this applies to mathematics and science, but then it became clear that this really does apply to any area of expertise.
It's always your friends that hate you the most.
I've mentioned before that I don't believe egalitarianism nor meritocracy to be the ultimate solution, but that rather a mix of the two is required. I should have listed the benefits and drawbacks to the two viewpoints also. Egalitarianism satisfies one's sense of compassion for their fellow humankind (or even animal, or life-kind), but it makes one susceptible to fraud; egalitarianism on the other hand resolves the fraud issue (assuming an infallible testing procedure), but leaves the least-qualified, the most unfortunate with nothing to hope for. In fact, the very idea of inherited fortune, or more broadly, the idea that one can be born into certain advantages or disadvantages (which vary wildly: money, fame, resources, societal pressures/expectations/leniencies, cultural bias, etc.), generates much discomfort with the idea that one will be judged by merits alone—it may even be direct inspiration for many egalitarian feelings.
dashing
10·17·09
Deluded in each other's favor.
Q: can we think of a method to add up the world lines of a gluon in such a way as to explain why gluons are always bound to one another or to quarks? Then that would be very analogous to the proposal that the Higgs is interfering with it's creation. The difficulty we have is it is too easy to think about it being some future event that is "traveling backwards in time" to cause trouble. But what we should be thinking is that the creation of such a particle (a free Higgs that is), generates world lines with the property that when added up, they destructively interfere in such a way as to destroy the world lines that lead to the creation of the free Higgs. Is the idea that the phenomena spans time any more counter-intuitive than the idea that a phenomena can span space? After all, entanglement was impossibly counter-intuitive when it was first hypothesized, but it has become a well-established phenomena. The challenge we face with proposing a "temporally-non-local" mechanism is that it is by it's very nature, exceedingly difficult to verify. (Also, intuitively, it offends our sense of causality even more than entanglement did, though ultimately we can now see how entanglement does not violate causality, as it first appeared to—it may be that this temporal mechanism is resolved similarly, through deeper understanding.)
What is the link between one-way functions and the halting problem? and entropy? and Laplace's Demon? and NP? (11·21·09 update: Seth mentioned that if P=NP you can commit wholesale macroscopic violations of the Second Law, therefore we can interpret the lack of a bacterium that does this to be further evidence of P \neq NP.)
How could he send her away?
"It's... inhuman, to be so cold."
"Today you don't mean it."
She can tell.
There is more than one part to each of us.
A mind divided.
"We should start from the top, and look at what we've got."
"Some, are mothers. And some people, dance."
Everybody feels that way.
I want to teach useful things, whereby we adopt the definition of useful to be something which increases total joy, rather than something which has practical application.
Delere Auctorem Rerum Ut Universum Infinitum Noscas.
(Destroy the author of things in order to understand the infinite universe.)
10·20·09
Get doomed.
"Suck on my sweet tooth til I'm sore."
"People do things right now all the time."
Is it impossible to make a computer curious?
"Just say what you're thinking."
10·22·09
"Information wants to be free"
Don't be the only one left without a chair when the music stops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMCf7SNUb-Q
http://wohba.com/2005/10/giant-smoke-rings.html
10·24·09
Do you think as cameras become more and more common, the difficulty in looking at the camera, rather than at the person holding the camera, will lessen? Will people who look at the camera be naturally selected? (More likely sexually selected.)
A Moment of Stillness
Thought & imagination into gift giving.
Brace for impact.
"I'm pulling back the curtain. I want to meet the wizard."
"Discovering the object of the game, is, the object of the game."
"Crystals of appetite."
10·26·09
"And it was perfect. Until the phone started ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing off."
I just realized suddenly, that the opposition to nuclear remains steadfast, and although I (and many others) consider it an extremely viable alternative to coal, (perhaps even the most viable), the resistance may simply be too great for it to ever come back.
Fight for it.
10·27·09
"Because you like to remember her."
How does layering change information content? For instance alphabet => words => sentences => paragraphs => chapters. Or DNA => amino acids => proteins (is that right? or is it DNA => genes => proteins? or am I even more wrong?)
a-z = 26
so 26 1 letter words
26^2 2 letter words
and so on.
Let's assume we don't often see words more than 8 letters long.
I looked up the average number of words per sentence, found this interesting article, and will take the number 18 as as an average for words per sentence. Assuming a uniform distribution for the length of words (we could improve by researching the actual distribution of word lengths), how many different sentences does that give us?
"Move beyond your need for unmoldy dishes."
Germ cells.
11·01·09
Time hates art.
"Something remarkable happens."
"It doesn't confirm your goosebumps."
I think I need to construct positive reinforcement in my life to alter my behavior. That would be clever.
"There is no pattern to find."
Gardening.
A parallax measurement of the galactic black hole puts it at about 7800 light years from here.
We're definitely all screwed.
11·3·09
"Shoot first, and then check to see if it's was one of your friends or a bird."
-Dick Cheney.
Squeeky clean.
11·4·09
Look no further.
11·5·09
So I was thinking: CMB = black body. Black holes -> Hawking radiation = black body. Olber's paradox = in an infinite universe, all lines of sight end on the surface of a star, thus no night sky thus universe is not infinite. But with black holes… some lines of sight could end on a black body radiator… which would look like the CMB! To go further, wouldn't gravitational effects redshift the light?
It seems to me that somewhere between redshift, dark matter, dark energy, inflation, quantum vacuum fluctuations, black holes & Hawking radiation, the CMB, Olber's paradox, galaxy rotation curves and the large scale structure of the universe, there is a better answer than big bang. But it seems that I need to know way more physics and mathematics to convince anyone.
11·9·09
"We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are."
Hubba hubba hubba.
11·10·09
"The slightest lapse of judgement."
eleven ten nine, it's like a countdown!
11·11·09
Well, which is it? Are you the typical American? Or the oppressed minority? You can't have it both ways.
"Science is interesting, and if you disagree you can fuck off."
NPR story about you have no right not to be framed?
How awesome, right?
Wait, what is the moral?
Arguments that morality owes it's existence to religion are easily dismissed by simply empathizing with Abraham during that time in which he believed god had commanded him to sacrifice Isaac—if upon considering such a situation one realizes that no plan, no king, no supreme being can give a good reason to murder one's own child (indeed because no such reason exists), then one is moral; if, on the other hand, one agrees to blindly follow the voices in their head, one is certifiably insane, and would best avoid harming society or themselves by seeking external, REAL people who want to help.
noetic
nous
Amalekites
Wilson want's a foundation for relative morality. So I will provide it to him. I will describe it in the narrative of how I resolved it for myself. You already understand that the view holds that there is no supreme power in the universe that "cares" about humans (or any other creature). I asked myself at some point, several years ago, what does morals mean to the moon? (The question was sort of a natural extension to environmentalist statements about what was good and bad for the earth.) The question can further be extended to even less important objects, as the moon does play a role in life as we know it (though it may be that life was and is possible without it.) What if Andromeda didn't exist? It would likely have no influence on humans (at least not for a few billion more years.) Okay, off track, sorry. So, I began thinking that a more correct statement would be to talk about what is good and bad for the earth (or moon, or andromeda) in terms of Me, or Us, or My Family, or My Neighbors, or My Country, or My Species, or the Animal Kingdom, or Life in general. Of course, depending on which one of these we choose we get different answers, radically different answers in some cases. Especially in the case of countries, where the impression of limited resources generates a kind of anxiety that frequently interferes with clear thinking. Now we might ask, why should I choose one basis of concern rather than another? Why choose to care about anyone other than me, or maybe family or country? (Sadly, many people, religious or not, seem to extend it no further than country.) Let's first establish natural reasons why you might choose to care about your extended society (that is, everyone to which you directly depend on; allow for an protectionism view of society for the time being.) It's related to your question: "why would an atheist care" about the genocide of the Amalekites? Because humans are one of many species that have developed social structures, and have evolved to become entirely reliant upon them. Individuals that lack the traits required to maintain a stable social structure would either destroy the society, or be ejected from it (the latter occurring if the society has developed the tools to find and expel those individuals.) So we need our society to exist, and even more to prosper. Obviously this can be extended through global trade to include all of the developed world—can we extend it to include the countries without goods or resources we want? Yes. First note that our prosperity is not a zero-sum game. No one need lose for others to win—you can build me a house while I grow your food, we don't need one of us to end up on the streets. Second, note that teamwork has a beneficial effect, as do technological advancement and education. The more highly educated we are, the more productive and prosperous we can be. The more people you can get to help with your work, the more you can get done. There is also the argument that compassion, a natural product of the aforementioned societal dependencies, can be extended beyond it's natural origins. This leads into the explanation of how we can expand our moral concerns beyond that of all humans, to include all animals or even all life. I'm not arguing that humans and animals have the same rights (I don't agree with that, but some people do), but I would argue that there are two obvious paths to concerning ourselves with animal well-being. The first is utility, we have the foresight to understand that taking care of our environment is of utmost importance to our long-term survival as a species, (this foresight is a uniquely human trait.) Second is again compassion—we have a strong sense of empathy, one that has probably outgrown it's natural causes. It is these principles that allow us to make moral decisions, and acknowledging that is of paramount importance to resolve new moral questions for which we have no precedent, that we now face due to the increases in our population and technology. Stem cells, global warming, genetic engineering and screening, gene therapy are some of the most recent moral questions we have been faced with, some of which may have no clear resolution yet. But what we DON'T need are allegorical stories and superstition from the desert goat herders of millennia past, who knew nothing of the world or all of it's boundless beauty. We need rational, thought-out discourse and debate. A well informed and educated public (if we want to preserve democracy), not bound to the morals of ancient ancestors but free to understand morality through their hearts and minds. And will everyone agree on what base to use? No. Of course not. There are the PETA activists who seem to think that animals deserve perfectly equal (sometimes even more) rights than humans, there are the patriots (read: nationalists) who seem to think this or that country needs to do what is in it's own best interest, and there are sociopaths who lack the notion of societal concerns all together. But with Religious claims masking all those natural feelings and developed thoughts on morality, you end up with a lot of people claiming (and believing themselves) to be morally right, correct, perfect, generating a false confidence (an arrogance) in their actions, and that has lead to untold suffering throughout history (see: catholic sexual abuse settlements, inquisition, and ongoing african AIDS epidemic.) Weinberg said it best, "with or without religion, you'd have good people doing good things and bad people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
And fine tuning is a terrible argument, because our understanding of the universe is so enormously incomplete, and the result of an arbitrary universe so entirely intractable, we simply can't claim that this universe is …wait, I'm getting off track.
For two reasons.
First we don't know what the underlying rules that make this universe the way it is. Much like the properties of numbers, the universe may simply be necessarily this way (this I believe is what Einstein meant when he asked "if god had a choice in making the world").
Second, if we assume that this universe could have been different, we don't know what effect that has on the likelihood that intelligent life (such as ourselves) would emerge. That is, we have no clue how changing the rules would affect the resulting universe. This is in part due to the unclarity of the rules (that is, we don't know if we've got the right rules yet, or how right the ones we have are, or even if there is a real set of rules. Worse still, we'll never really be sure if we've got the right rules or not.) But also because given a set of rules, computing the outcome is practically impossible (at least as far as human computing power is concerned.)
Because we can't know the rules of the universe with certainty, nor can we ever really know the likelihood or unlikelihood of them occurring in the way they did, we really can't make statements about how probable or improbable the tuning of the universe is. All we can really say is that if these rules we believe are valid, were changed, that these basic consequences would result (such as stars would not work the way we know them to.) This does not exclude them giving rise to life in a way alternative to the way we know.
My personal hunch is that we will find laws of the universe that will be very similar to the the laws of numbers—that indeed the universe did not have a choice in it's properties.
11·17·09
Oh no, don't tell me what comes next.
Oh no, let me make up the rest.
While in the shower, moments ago, intending to expand upon my hypothesis of consciousness, I stumbled across something else: a hypothesis of imagination. I had been thinking that the concept of consciousness should include some ability to simulate (basically hijack our audio/visual/etc. "feelings" without those senses actually being triggered), thus you can imagine what this might sound like if read by me, or someone with a british accent, or something else. (Or maybe you can't, it's unclear why/how we develop the ability to do such things, or whether or not we all develop all these abilities). You might be able to imagine what a pink elephant would look like, (maybe you can't even help thinking about it when it's mentioned here). But half way through this reasoning it started to seem as if simulation was more the domain of imagination than consciousness. Now, I don't know where the popular concepts of imagination and consciousness might overlap (or not), I'm slightly inclined to label imagination as a subset of consciousness, but it really doesn't matter. All I want to assert is that consciousness consists of the ability to observe computation as it occurs, and imagination consists of the ability to simulate something representative of reality. I suppose the interesting part of this idea might be that imagination doesn't require consciousness to exist, but the two are intimately linked—if a creature developed the neural circuitry required to simulate it's environment (which would be very useful for survival, to help predict which actions to take, based on the simulation, to produce the most favorable outcome in reality, based on which simulation produced the most favorable outcome.)
11·19·09
"Yes doctor, I'll get the tools from the shed."
"Scallops musta got 'em."
"Commencing intestinal flash flood."
After learning more about closed time like curves today, a new question comes to light: how would one differentiate between time travel and not?
"You should be kissed and often. And by someone who knows how."
10/12/2009
Thus Contemptible
9·13·09
Noma Bar has awesome negative space artwork.
Land-ho
"Now he's left to pine on an island, wracked with grief"
I'd like to know more about how we calculate the decay time for positronium.
Normal heart sounds. Auscultation.
"You have corrupted your purpose... and so yourself. And you did hide away what should always have been mine."
I don't like how easily I find significance in simple words phrases and sentences. It makes me feel cheap.
9·16·09
So I guess on the one hand I have an abnormally weak sense of dedication to friends and family, but an abnormally strong dedication to humankind in general. In which case it becomes unclear why I care about who. And how does one express affection, or appreciation or concern or support or caring, for friends and family, or romance for specific individuals, when they cannot differentiate between why they concern themselves with friends and family verses with humans in general? I'm all for saving animals, for avoiding inhuman treatment, maybe even, when I really think about it, for vegetarianism, I'm not entirely sure. But at least for a minimizing of animal suffering. However, I cannot imagine placing animal suffering on an equal plane as human suffering. And plenty of humans are. Beyond starvation and unsanitary issues, beyond preventable disease (which motivated Bill Gates to spend more than 30 billion dollars fighting diseases in Africa that have essentially been eradicated in the industrialized world), we just simply don't get along! And I see this as hugely influential in the rest of the problems. If we all took this attitude, we could eradicate virtually all human suffering in just a few years. The resources are unbelievably abundant. But instead we concern ourselves with cable TV and riding lawn mowers, or private jets or vacation homes or all sorts of other unbelievably lavish luxuries. There is another way to get there though. If we can push ourselves far enough forward, it seems inevitable that the result will be a vast entitlement to the whole world. I've said this before, I see nothing to prevent us from replacing all human work with robotics, and in fact I see nothing to prevent this from happening naturally, as capitalism forces increased automation. Which implies forced unemployment. Which isn't a problem if everything is automated. But the transition would require some consideration. So why do we each pick different paths in attempting to improve the world? Because we each have different interpretations of what is best, what is achievable, what is realistic...
An update (10·12): this is bound to happen as computers become ever more ubiquitous; modern computers are mostly machine made as is, since most of the parts are too small to be seen (modern processors actually have billions of transistors which are too small to be seen with light! So you need an electron microscope or atomic force microscope, or one of many other types of non-optical microscopes.) Indeed, humans cannot get involved in building computers, we simply cannot be skilled enough (of course, for at least a while longer we'll be designing them and assembling the bigger parts maybe, but those jobs too will benefit from automation eventually.)
The question is, after you've allowed your imagination to run amok, is anyone very interesting? Skeletons in a closet, could they beat out the realities in the papers? Like the Fritzl case? Or the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard? Or how about voluntary cannibal victims? Like Armin Meiwes's victim? Or how about Issei Sagawa? No, truth is probably stranger than fiction. Dammit, now I'm freaked out by how weird this world is.
9·17·09
"Send out a battalion, to find her."
Beauty abounds.
The process of fragmenting one's mind is no fools errand.
Do people respect me so much because I respect them so much? Can they really see that in me? I'm not saying I don't, I just wouldn't have thought it would be any more observable than the rest of my feelings.
Stupid wiring! Stupid brain!
Negotiations and arguments and secrets, and compromises.
I don't want to cross such a flimsy concept as "meaning" with something so permanent.
The idea that aliens might immigrate from their own planet to our solar system, in search of resources, such as is portrayed in the movie Independence Day, doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Considering the amount of resources required to move anyone from one planet to another, let alone one star to another, it seems highly unlikely that anyone would make such a journey in search of new resources. It's sort of like getting in your car and driving around the planet a few thousand times, in hopes of reaching a gas station. I could do the numbers... figure the closest star, Proxima Centuri, is about 4.2 light years away, which is in the ball park of 24-25 trillion miles (a trillion being a thousand million). It's a bit disappointing that no comparisons really help us to comprehend that distance; driving around the earth about a billion times doesn't mean anything to us. How about this... if you got in a plane, and flew at 500 miles per hour (maybe a little slow for an airline? I dunno...), it'd take... about 5.5 million years. Or how about this, if you had kids at aged 35 (admittedly, a little bit older than average), and they had kids at the same exact age, and so on, it'd take about 157 thousand generations to get there. Granted, 500 mph is very slow for space travel. So lets assume 1,000,000 mph, (~278 miles per second, still pretty slow compared to c), then it would only take ~78 generations! (At 35 again for reproduction.) The vastness of space is very difficult to relate to. Probably downright impossible, for all of us. Because we just didn't evolve to deal with such huge ranges in scale. But back to the point. Can you imagine setting off on a voyage with the goal of "invading" a foreign enemy, trillions of miles away, so you could get... what, oil? gold? It'd be cheaper to make it in a nuclear reactor (it'd be cheaper still to dig it out of the ground.) What, to get energy? Until our star dies, that doesn't matter (~5 billion years, estimated?). And if you have the means of surviving a 24 trillion mile trip, you must have some damn good methods of storing and transporting energy, in which case the destination star can't be that important. I'll bet you can find enough of any given resource in interstellar space to make a trip to another star completely useless. Why is it so easy for people to make such miscalculations of scale? Or do I overestimate people's ability to do so?
"What'd you make of that?"
It's funny how I deal with mathematics. It's not that I change from not understanding to understanding, it's more like I change from unable to remember to remembering/accepting. As if progress were mostly attributable to my ability to remember definitions rather than something more commonly interpreted as comprehension.
Wait a second, why don't they just put a second laser on the mouse? One for the normal mouse movements, and one for the 'wheel/ball'. If apple mice get dirty and need cleaning out (EXACTLY like older ball-based mice had problems with), then isn't it logical to switch to a "laser" system? (That never needs cleaning.)
People sometimes reject my efforts to combat creationism, asserting that such people will not be swayed. But watching this video with Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, in which Kirk suggests you help by getting a bunch of copies of their mutated version of On the Origin of Species for your church, I realized, while we mostly pan to our own audience, and they mostly pan to their own audience, we are both fighting over the small middle ground, and I believe we have much better odds of swaying them than the opponents, since we have actual evidence and reason and logic on our sides, and all they really have is an old book that essentially knows nothing of the reality we live in.
I can identify with the outrage people are expressing over this, but only a little bit. It's too silly for me to be seriously concerned with. Maybe I'm just smug, but it seems that they cannot win this battle. Beyond reason and evidence (and faulty reasoning and a lack of evidence on their side), we have a whole heap of useful results. It's simply untenable. Even if an anti-evolution movement could succeed in displacing evolution in america, all it means is that another country would outpace progress that depends on evolutionary theory (maybe not, considering the shear size of the american education system, even if there were strong sentiment against evolution there would remain limited strong support, which would result in intelligent and successful researchers). But what I mean is "the cat is out of the bag", and our global society is one big capitalist free market, and if we don't accept the most useful and accurate hypothesis, someone else will, and it'll pay off. And why should I care if it is us or them that improve my life? Certainly it would be easier to relate to an Iraqi or Iranian or Palestinian or North Korean evolutionary biologist than it would be to identify with an American creationist (ID "theorist", ha!).
Martians are from Mars, Venusians are from Venus.
"What I was trying to do is not smile and not scowl... I was sort of trying to look like an empty suit." -Bill Clinton
9·20·09
I will take your fury.
"I wouldn't pick me."
People seem to fear the idea of having no memory, as portrayed by EP in this article. I'm not sure I relate entirely. When you consider things people are typically saddened/frightened/anxious about (or any other rough interpretation of negatively disturbed), they seem more often to rely on memory than not. People seem to remember past mistakes, and previous traumatic experiences, and grudges and regrets. Fears seem more situational, and limited. I suppose if you have an overwhelming fear of something in ever day life, then the loss of your long-term memory may generate much anxiety, but more typical fears seem limited to situations and seem less persistent.
"Would you love me, if I was anything but what I am?"
So I thought this was kind of interesting, and I wonder: if it turns out that turbulence is only really well-modeled (i.e., completely/accurately/under a wide range of conditions) when based at the particle level, and if we could further prove that any model which does not attempt to simulate the particle level must sacrifice accuracy for the sake of tractability, would that imply that economic systems suffer from the same tradeoff?
Do a good job of bringing me back from incredulous, and I'll be happy.
9·21·09
Thus contemptible.
9·22·09
The Laws of Physics are such that they simply cannot be violated—any verified violation would simply result in a reformulation of the Laws. There are no requirements beyond absolute agreement with evidence. This is the basic reason why Physics supersedes god: it abandons all traditions and dogmas, favors no opinions, no beliefs, and no books. This is really true of all science, physics just happens to be the science of finding the base laws of the universe, and as such, provides the foundation for what is and is not possible. This is also the basic reason why religion encounters so much trouble, by declaring truths prematurely (or really, at all). To be fair, we are all guilty of this from time to time (especially the cosmologists! You're going to make us all look stupid! I say it with love.)
In what interpretation is this seen as fiscally conservative? If you consider yourself fiscally conservative, then who the hell voted for W.?
Press button, wait for signal.
There can be such supremely pleasant emotion invoked by music; I wish I could write it down here to express it and record it. (I think both rapture and ecstasy are better descriptions, but both words seem to have more common meanings that have grown distant from my intent.)
9·24·09
Beautiful.
Learn you. I'd be ruined.
9·25·09
Wandering in a room pitch black, without knowing where the obstacles lie, and a constant keen anxiousness that at any moment you might meet an object that refuses to give way to you—table, chair, wall—invoking that seemingly absurd sensation of abruptly halting when you have scarcely moved!
This is the most familiar meaning of social relationships to me.
Of course, after all these years I remember that people typically keep the center of their rooms clear of obstruction, and if I can get to and remain in the center, physical conflict will cease.
But if I spend enough time with someone, my eyes do adjust a little bit, and I can begin to make out the dim silhouettes of their furnishings, and I can begin to navigate and avoid the violent impacts with their lives.
Unless we discuss science of course, which is a well lit room that I've spent most of my life in.
Interestingly enough, conflict avoidance is probably not the optimal solution. Just as overconfidence has unexpected benefits.
Hold in your breath.
9·26·09
Ha ha, I just found the website for a college radio station I've been listening to (91.5 WUML Lowell), and at the bottom of their webpage it says this:"Unfortunately and ironically, the opinions expressed by WUML
do not necessarily reflect the opinions held by UMass Lowell."
I just found this in an email I wrote to myself on 8·14·06, but never sent:
I am beginning to realize that creationists distrust the empirical methods of scientific investigation. And I am wondering, just what sort of alternatives are there to empirical evidence?
Immediately I think of the human mind, and intuition. I suppose inner thought, intuition, divine inspiration, are all somewhat lumpable together, since they all occur within the observers mind and are by definition excluded from any other observer's view.
I am aware that I may be overlooking alternate sources of knowledge, so if you think of any, let me know.
For now, I'll focus on these inner thought methods.
If inner thought is a reliable source of knowledge/information about the material world, how is it that we should differentiate between true and false conclusions? After all, inner thought has lead to a great many miscalculations, both personal and public, among every single human being in all of history.
How is it that the non-agreeing inner thought of two individuals can be reconciled? Obviously 'god' reveals different messages to both christians and satanists, or christians and judaists, or protestants and catholics, or virtually any two religious denominations.
How is it that we may personally trust our inner thought?
How is it that other people cannot see how absurd this whole idea is?
How does one differentiate between premature enlightenment, and the real thing? Simple, one does not. One assumes that what one knows is as much as one can know until one knows more. There is no use fretting over knowledge unknown.
This is fun:
State of calamity.
9·28·09
I'm not all for egalitarianism, nor am I all for meritocracy, but rather somewhere in between. I'm egalitarian about a basic set of human needs (food, shelter, clothing, education, health), and merit based for most else. Does that make me a socialist? I don't think so, but if it does, then so be it. How can so many people have said/heard/believed that actions speak louder than words, and yet so many people be hung up on words so easily?
9·30·09
"Love is little, love is low,
Love will make our spirits grow:
Grow in peace, grow in light.
Love will do the thing that's right."
10·1·09
Simple solution: stop worrying about it!
So this is kind of crazy:permanent infant. So if you barter your soul to the devil in exchange for immortality or extreme longevity or eternal youth, be sure to specify what age you mean by youth.
"We never seem to get a break, do we."
10·3·09
This is enjoyable.
Am I an early socialist?
People have far less compassion for one another than I previously believed. Even now, this fact remains so counter-intuitive to me that I have to remind myself of it and force my own processing of it to remember, and to see how that fact affects my own view of the world. It is a real wake up call. It has even now revealed that my optimism often overpowers my rationality, which, as a scientist, is a little bit worrisome. Though at least now I can be more aware of my biases.
10·4·09
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
If only; sans religion would internet in the 1600s have been possible?
10·6·09
Whoa, clearly I have much to learn.
I believe I spend more time calibrating my judgement than I do judging things.
I don't exactly think that nothing is sacred, I merely reserve the right to reject other individual's claims to something being sacred.
10·8·09
"...hence, like one who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could."
"All religions bear traces of the fact that they owe their origin to an early im-mature intellectuality of men—they all make very light of the obligation to speak the truth: they know nothing of a duty to God to be truthful and clear in his communications to mankind."
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, p81
Dry run you might say.
Oh, it's so obvious in retrospect (isn't it always?), if we are to define scientific statements as falsifiable, then we immediately know where religion can survive: in the un-falsifiable. (Perhaps we should define retrospect as the process in which a problem transforms from difficult to trivial.)
10·9·09
"In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
-Stephen J. Gould
Very well said Stephen! (Another Dead Hero)
Whoever wrote the the bible stories about genesis and Noah's ark didn't know anything about inbreeding did they?
Oh wait, I guess whoever wrote the story of Noah the second time did know better, since they said seven, not two, of every thing.
Meet me half way, because I'll never cross this gap alone.
Please let me be blown away.
10·11·09
What I want is nothing.
10·12·09
I need this as much as you do.
So when did I become the serious and solemn one?
Bernard just sent me this. On the one hand, it's too bad I didn't have a large poster of that when I was little, because if I did, I'd probably know the periodic table very well now. On the other hand, I'd probably be a chemist, so it's better that I didn't!
Oh, and a while back he sent me this, an interesting news article about some recovered work by Archimedes, from 2,200 years ago. (It appears he was much closer to discovering & understanding calculus than we previously imagined, something europeans repeated in the 1700s). Why did it go unnoticed so long? Because some religious asshole at some point recovered the paper for some religious nonsense. The harm that religion has inflicted upon humankind is without equal. Small pox may have killed 300-500 million people between 1900 and 1979, but it was (and continues to be) religion that interferes with the scientific and technological progress that frees mankind from such scourge. Calculus before christianity? Why is the latter so widespread, when the former is so incredibly powerful? One provides a kind of internal comfort, the other unravels the mysteries of nature, brings the horribly complex phenomena surrounding us into focus, translates the universe into a language that actually fits into our tiny little heads.
WE NEED TO MAKE CALCULUS A RELIGION SUBSTITUTE.
Noma Bar has awesome negative space artwork.
Land-ho
"Now he's left to pine on an island, wracked with grief"
I'd like to know more about how we calculate the decay time for positronium.
Normal heart sounds. Auscultation.
"You have corrupted your purpose... and so yourself. And you did hide away what should always have been mine."
I don't like how easily I find significance in simple words phrases and sentences. It makes me feel cheap.
9·16·09
So I guess on the one hand I have an abnormally weak sense of dedication to friends and family, but an abnormally strong dedication to humankind in general. In which case it becomes unclear why I care about who. And how does one express affection, or appreciation or concern or support or caring, for friends and family, or romance for specific individuals, when they cannot differentiate between why they concern themselves with friends and family verses with humans in general? I'm all for saving animals, for avoiding inhuman treatment, maybe even, when I really think about it, for vegetarianism, I'm not entirely sure. But at least for a minimizing of animal suffering. However, I cannot imagine placing animal suffering on an equal plane as human suffering. And plenty of humans are. Beyond starvation and unsanitary issues, beyond preventable disease (which motivated Bill Gates to spend more than 30 billion dollars fighting diseases in Africa that have essentially been eradicated in the industrialized world), we just simply don't get along! And I see this as hugely influential in the rest of the problems. If we all took this attitude, we could eradicate virtually all human suffering in just a few years. The resources are unbelievably abundant. But instead we concern ourselves with cable TV and riding lawn mowers, or private jets or vacation homes or all sorts of other unbelievably lavish luxuries. There is another way to get there though. If we can push ourselves far enough forward, it seems inevitable that the result will be a vast entitlement to the whole world. I've said this before, I see nothing to prevent us from replacing all human work with robotics, and in fact I see nothing to prevent this from happening naturally, as capitalism forces increased automation. Which implies forced unemployment. Which isn't a problem if everything is automated. But the transition would require some consideration. So why do we each pick different paths in attempting to improve the world? Because we each have different interpretations of what is best, what is achievable, what is realistic...
An update (10·12): this is bound to happen as computers become ever more ubiquitous; modern computers are mostly machine made as is, since most of the parts are too small to be seen (modern processors actually have billions of transistors which are too small to be seen with light! So you need an electron microscope or atomic force microscope, or one of many other types of non-optical microscopes.) Indeed, humans cannot get involved in building computers, we simply cannot be skilled enough (of course, for at least a while longer we'll be designing them and assembling the bigger parts maybe, but those jobs too will benefit from automation eventually.)
The question is, after you've allowed your imagination to run amok, is anyone very interesting? Skeletons in a closet, could they beat out the realities in the papers? Like the Fritzl case? Or the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard? Or how about voluntary cannibal victims? Like Armin Meiwes's victim? Or how about Issei Sagawa? No, truth is probably stranger than fiction. Dammit, now I'm freaked out by how weird this world is.
9·17·09
"Send out a battalion, to find her."
Beauty abounds.
The process of fragmenting one's mind is no fools errand.
Do people respect me so much because I respect them so much? Can they really see that in me? I'm not saying I don't, I just wouldn't have thought it would be any more observable than the rest of my feelings.
Stupid wiring! Stupid brain!
Negotiations and arguments and secrets, and compromises.
I don't want to cross such a flimsy concept as "meaning" with something so permanent.
The idea that aliens might immigrate from their own planet to our solar system, in search of resources, such as is portrayed in the movie Independence Day, doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Considering the amount of resources required to move anyone from one planet to another, let alone one star to another, it seems highly unlikely that anyone would make such a journey in search of new resources. It's sort of like getting in your car and driving around the planet a few thousand times, in hopes of reaching a gas station. I could do the numbers... figure the closest star, Proxima Centuri, is about 4.2 light years away, which is in the ball park of 24-25 trillion miles (a trillion being a thousand million). It's a bit disappointing that no comparisons really help us to comprehend that distance; driving around the earth about a billion times doesn't mean anything to us. How about this... if you got in a plane, and flew at 500 miles per hour (maybe a little slow for an airline? I dunno...), it'd take... about 5.5 million years. Or how about this, if you had kids at aged 35 (admittedly, a little bit older than average), and they had kids at the same exact age, and so on, it'd take about 157 thousand generations to get there. Granted, 500 mph is very slow for space travel. So lets assume 1,000,000 mph, (~278 miles per second, still pretty slow compared to c), then it would only take ~78 generations! (At 35 again for reproduction.) The vastness of space is very difficult to relate to. Probably downright impossible, for all of us. Because we just didn't evolve to deal with such huge ranges in scale. But back to the point. Can you imagine setting off on a voyage with the goal of "invading" a foreign enemy, trillions of miles away, so you could get... what, oil? gold? It'd be cheaper to make it in a nuclear reactor (it'd be cheaper still to dig it out of the ground.) What, to get energy? Until our star dies, that doesn't matter (~5 billion years, estimated?). And if you have the means of surviving a 24 trillion mile trip, you must have some damn good methods of storing and transporting energy, in which case the destination star can't be that important. I'll bet you can find enough of any given resource in interstellar space to make a trip to another star completely useless. Why is it so easy for people to make such miscalculations of scale? Or do I overestimate people's ability to do so?
"What'd you make of that?"
It's funny how I deal with mathematics. It's not that I change from not understanding to understanding, it's more like I change from unable to remember to remembering/accepting. As if progress were mostly attributable to my ability to remember definitions rather than something more commonly interpreted as comprehension.
Wait a second, why don't they just put a second laser on the mouse? One for the normal mouse movements, and one for the 'wheel/ball'. If apple mice get dirty and need cleaning out (EXACTLY like older ball-based mice had problems with), then isn't it logical to switch to a "laser" system? (That never needs cleaning.)
People sometimes reject my efforts to combat creationism, asserting that such people will not be swayed. But watching this video with Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, in which Kirk suggests you help by getting a bunch of copies of their mutated version of On the Origin of Species for your church, I realized, while we mostly pan to our own audience, and they mostly pan to their own audience, we are both fighting over the small middle ground, and I believe we have much better odds of swaying them than the opponents, since we have actual evidence and reason and logic on our sides, and all they really have is an old book that essentially knows nothing of the reality we live in.
I can identify with the outrage people are expressing over this, but only a little bit. It's too silly for me to be seriously concerned with. Maybe I'm just smug, but it seems that they cannot win this battle. Beyond reason and evidence (and faulty reasoning and a lack of evidence on their side), we have a whole heap of useful results. It's simply untenable. Even if an anti-evolution movement could succeed in displacing evolution in america, all it means is that another country would outpace progress that depends on evolutionary theory (maybe not, considering the shear size of the american education system, even if there were strong sentiment against evolution there would remain limited strong support, which would result in intelligent and successful researchers). But what I mean is "the cat is out of the bag", and our global society is one big capitalist free market, and if we don't accept the most useful and accurate hypothesis, someone else will, and it'll pay off. And why should I care if it is us or them that improve my life? Certainly it would be easier to relate to an Iraqi or Iranian or Palestinian or North Korean evolutionary biologist than it would be to identify with an American creationist (ID "theorist", ha!).
Martians are from Mars, Venusians are from Venus.
"What I was trying to do is not smile and not scowl... I was sort of trying to look like an empty suit." -Bill Clinton
9·20·09
I will take your fury.
"I wouldn't pick me."
People seem to fear the idea of having no memory, as portrayed by EP in this article. I'm not sure I relate entirely. When you consider things people are typically saddened/frightened/anxious about (or any other rough interpretation of negatively disturbed), they seem more often to rely on memory than not. People seem to remember past mistakes, and previous traumatic experiences, and grudges and regrets. Fears seem more situational, and limited. I suppose if you have an overwhelming fear of something in ever day life, then the loss of your long-term memory may generate much anxiety, but more typical fears seem limited to situations and seem less persistent.
"Would you love me, if I was anything but what I am?"
So I thought this was kind of interesting, and I wonder: if it turns out that turbulence is only really well-modeled (i.e., completely/accurately/under a wide range of conditions) when based at the particle level, and if we could further prove that any model which does not attempt to simulate the particle level must sacrifice accuracy for the sake of tractability, would that imply that economic systems suffer from the same tradeoff?
Do a good job of bringing me back from incredulous, and I'll be happy.
9·21·09
Thus contemptible.
9·22·09
The Laws of Physics are such that they simply cannot be violated—any verified violation would simply result in a reformulation of the Laws. There are no requirements beyond absolute agreement with evidence. This is the basic reason why Physics supersedes god: it abandons all traditions and dogmas, favors no opinions, no beliefs, and no books. This is really true of all science, physics just happens to be the science of finding the base laws of the universe, and as such, provides the foundation for what is and is not possible. This is also the basic reason why religion encounters so much trouble, by declaring truths prematurely (or really, at all). To be fair, we are all guilty of this from time to time (especially the cosmologists! You're going to make us all look stupid! I say it with love.)
In what interpretation is this seen as fiscally conservative? If you consider yourself fiscally conservative, then who the hell voted for W.?
Press button, wait for signal.
There can be such supremely pleasant emotion invoked by music; I wish I could write it down here to express it and record it. (I think both rapture and ecstasy are better descriptions, but both words seem to have more common meanings that have grown distant from my intent.)
9·24·09
Beautiful.
Learn you. I'd be ruined.
9·25·09
Wandering in a room pitch black, without knowing where the obstacles lie, and a constant keen anxiousness that at any moment you might meet an object that refuses to give way to you—table, chair, wall—invoking that seemingly absurd sensation of abruptly halting when you have scarcely moved!
This is the most familiar meaning of social relationships to me.
Of course, after all these years I remember that people typically keep the center of their rooms clear of obstruction, and if I can get to and remain in the center, physical conflict will cease.
But if I spend enough time with someone, my eyes do adjust a little bit, and I can begin to make out the dim silhouettes of their furnishings, and I can begin to navigate and avoid the violent impacts with their lives.
Unless we discuss science of course, which is a well lit room that I've spent most of my life in.
Interestingly enough, conflict avoidance is probably not the optimal solution. Just as overconfidence has unexpected benefits.
Hold in your breath.
9·26·09
Ha ha, I just found the website for a college radio station I've been listening to (91.5 WUML Lowell), and at the bottom of their webpage it says this:"Unfortunately and ironically, the opinions expressed by WUML
do not necessarily reflect the opinions held by UMass Lowell."
I just found this in an email I wrote to myself on 8·14·06, but never sent:
I am beginning to realize that creationists distrust the empirical methods of scientific investigation. And I am wondering, just what sort of alternatives are there to empirical evidence?
Immediately I think of the human mind, and intuition. I suppose inner thought, intuition, divine inspiration, are all somewhat lumpable together, since they all occur within the observers mind and are by definition excluded from any other observer's view.
I am aware that I may be overlooking alternate sources of knowledge, so if you think of any, let me know.
For now, I'll focus on these inner thought methods.
If inner thought is a reliable source of knowledge/information about the material world, how is it that we should differentiate between true and false conclusions? After all, inner thought has lead to a great many miscalculations, both personal and public, among every single human being in all of history.
How is it that the non-agreeing inner thought of two individuals can be reconciled? Obviously 'god' reveals different messages to both christians and satanists, or christians and judaists, or protestants and catholics, or virtually any two religious denominations.
How is it that we may personally trust our inner thought?
How is it that other people cannot see how absurd this whole idea is?
How does one differentiate between premature enlightenment, and the real thing? Simple, one does not. One assumes that what one knows is as much as one can know until one knows more. There is no use fretting over knowledge unknown.
This is fun:
Every invalid syllogism breaks at least one rule.Someone posted that in a jokes forum, and pointed out that both the premises and conclusion are true. Hence the joke.
This syllogism breaks at least one rule.
Therefore, this syllogism is invalid.
State of calamity.
9·28·09
I'm not all for egalitarianism, nor am I all for meritocracy, but rather somewhere in between. I'm egalitarian about a basic set of human needs (food, shelter, clothing, education, health), and merit based for most else. Does that make me a socialist? I don't think so, but if it does, then so be it. How can so many people have said/heard/believed that actions speak louder than words, and yet so many people be hung up on words so easily?
9·30·09
"Love is little, love is low,
Love will make our spirits grow:
Grow in peace, grow in light.
Love will do the thing that's right."
10·1·09
Simple solution: stop worrying about it!
So this is kind of crazy:permanent infant. So if you barter your soul to the devil in exchange for immortality or extreme longevity or eternal youth, be sure to specify what age you mean by youth.
"We never seem to get a break, do we."
10·3·09
This is enjoyable.
Am I an early socialist?
People have far less compassion for one another than I previously believed. Even now, this fact remains so counter-intuitive to me that I have to remind myself of it and force my own processing of it to remember, and to see how that fact affects my own view of the world. It is a real wake up call. It has even now revealed that my optimism often overpowers my rationality, which, as a scientist, is a little bit worrisome. Though at least now I can be more aware of my biases.
10·4·09
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
If only; sans religion would internet in the 1600s have been possible?
10·6·09
Whoa, clearly I have much to learn.
I believe I spend more time calibrating my judgement than I do judging things.
I don't exactly think that nothing is sacred, I merely reserve the right to reject other individual's claims to something being sacred.
10·8·09
"...hence, like one who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could."
"All religions bear traces of the fact that they owe their origin to an early im-mature intellectuality of men—they all make very light of the obligation to speak the truth: they know nothing of a duty to God to be truthful and clear in his communications to mankind."
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, p81
Dry run you might say.
Oh, it's so obvious in retrospect (isn't it always?), if we are to define scientific statements as falsifiable, then we immediately know where religion can survive: in the un-falsifiable. (Perhaps we should define retrospect as the process in which a problem transforms from difficult to trivial.)
10·9·09
"In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
-Stephen J. Gould
Very well said Stephen! (Another Dead Hero)
Whoever wrote the the bible stories about genesis and Noah's ark didn't know anything about inbreeding did they?
Oh wait, I guess whoever wrote the story of Noah the second time did know better, since they said seven, not two, of every thing.
Meet me half way, because I'll never cross this gap alone.
Please let me be blown away.
10·11·09
What I want is nothing.
10·12·09
I need this as much as you do.
So when did I become the serious and solemn one?
Bernard just sent me this. On the one hand, it's too bad I didn't have a large poster of that when I was little, because if I did, I'd probably know the periodic table very well now. On the other hand, I'd probably be a chemist, so it's better that I didn't!
Oh, and a while back he sent me this, an interesting news article about some recovered work by Archimedes, from 2,200 years ago. (It appears he was much closer to discovering & understanding calculus than we previously imagined, something europeans repeated in the 1700s). Why did it go unnoticed so long? Because some religious asshole at some point recovered the paper for some religious nonsense. The harm that religion has inflicted upon humankind is without equal. Small pox may have killed 300-500 million people between 1900 and 1979, but it was (and continues to be) religion that interferes with the scientific and technological progress that frees mankind from such scourge. Calculus before christianity? Why is the latter so widespread, when the former is so incredibly powerful? One provides a kind of internal comfort, the other unravels the mysteries of nature, brings the horribly complex phenomena surrounding us into focus, translates the universe into a language that actually fits into our tiny little heads.
WE NEED TO MAKE CALCULUS A RELIGION SUBSTITUTE.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)