brilliant!

what is the biblical stance on digital media? what was the stance of the founding fathers on digital media when they wrote the constitution? we cannot stop these clowns.

Jiang replied "I think never killed."

we resemble but are legally distinct from the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild...
all civilization was just an effort to impress the opposite sex. and sometimes the same sex.
i always write the date in the corner. its incase i find something important.
be proud of your perversion.
"i am trying to break your heart"

is it possible for one to limit one's indulgences in such a way as to make all things exciting at all times? as a mundane example: drinking juice only so often enough as to make it more enjoyable as an exotic alternative to say water? can one be aware of such intentional self deception, and still be physically deceived?

what is this?

wait a second: "and the length of the sum of two vectors is no larger than the sum of lengths of the vectors". shouldnt that be, the length of the sum of two vectors is equal to the sum of the lengths?

aspect blindness. most certainly something i am susceptible to, and must experience. but how to find out what? how does one learn what what does not know?

"Greg, I completely agree that people follow chains of inference further when they have a personal stake in the outcome. Indeed, one could even argue that the key insight needed to get science off the ground was that the same reasoning processes used to drive wildebeests off a cliff, detect a cheating mate, etc., can also be used to study the nature of the celestial bodies and the origin of the universe. You just have to act like it matters to you!" -Scott Aaronson
---and thats how i became a scientist. and how most of us get there i think... it matters to us, these things that are often seen as mundane or simple or well understood... why does a bike not fall over when you ride above a certain speed? oh right, cause the wheels are spinning faster. what? but why does a bike not fall over??? oh right, i know now... do you?

sanity is not something that can be accessed, really, by anyone. it is a concept that extends beyond reality really. its like time travel and inter-galatic travel, and probably inter-stellar travel even; we cannot know. reminds me of a quote by Hilbert: "we must know. we will know."

i think i found a new friend

although i am, in general, resiliently optimistic, this challenges me:
"These statistics contrast starkly with those from many other nations. According to the International Social Survey Program, a comparative study of beliefs and practices in 31 nations, while a mere 3.2 percent of Americans will agree flatly that they "don't believe in God," 17.2 percent of the Dutch concur with that statement, as do 19.1 of those in France, 16.8 percent of Swedes, 20.3 percent of people in the Czech Republic, 19.7 percent of Russians, 10.6 percent of Japanese and 9.2 percent of Canadians.
...
"So, I'll out myself. I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection." -Natalie Angier
---although i am alone, it is statements like these that curb my loneliness, (although they do leave something wanting), it is very comforting to read someone express so clearly what you think.

quoting one more paragraph:
"Religion may be innate, but so, too, is skepticism. Consider that we are the most socially sophisticated of all creatures, reliant on reciprocal altruism for so much of our success. We are profoundly dependent on the good will and good behavior of others, and we are perpetually seeking evidence that those around us are trustworthy, are true to their word, are not about to desert us, rob us blind, murder us as we sleep. It is not enough for a newcomer to tell us: "Open your door. Trust me. I'm a swell citizen -- really." We want proof. The human race resides in one great Show Me state."
this last paragraph makes me feel inhuman, as i tend to trust people by default. my immediate thoughts are that people generally have to prove their inability to be trusted for me to not trust them. i tend to assume good will of others, good behavior (although i also have fairly lax standards when it comes to 'good behavior', as well as not much of a sense of 'good' and 'bad').

interesting new approach to arguments about god: computational complexity theory...
can god solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time?
well, can god transcend logic? seems unlikely, since, if god can transcend logic, what remains? what meaning can right and wrong have if there is no such thing as a 'valid conclusion'? if there is no real connection between cause and effect, what remains to be said of the universe? especially in the absolutes that people seem so fond of these days. they dont understand how little we know.

existential crisis

is it possible that the war between the believers of a personal god, and the non-believers, is a recent argument? at first i thought, how old are the beliefs of fundamentalist christians? and then i realized, though they are old, why do they seem more prominent now than ever throughout history? and i think i know the answer: we know how the time to think about them. it goes back to Russell's statement about filling leisure time; in the last 50 years, in america, leisure time has greatly increased (even if work hours havent, work has shifted to less physically exhausting and more mentally exhausting; schooling has also lengthened, as many more attend college now, leading to more leisure time, reflection, etc). america easily has the largest total amount of increased leisure, as it has not only advanced much, it is also quite large. how have americans learned to fill this leisure time? well, some chose video games, and before that, TV. some chose study, sciences, arts, nature, philosophy. some chose religion, and they now have the time to promote it.

"It doesn’t follow that, because the meaning of a command is obscure, we’re not obliged to obey it." -Michael Brazier
whoa, really? so if we just had one law that said, 'dont do wrong', and then we went around and arrested anyone we deemed to be 'wrong', itd be their fault for not obeying? isnt the clarity of the command integral to our ability to follow it?

"If Feynman is outside of the implicit historical window of Wilber’s book, he also skips Dirac, who once said: 'I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest - and as scientists honesty is our precise duty - we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination' "

wow, go Dirac.

to continue catagorizing myself, breaking down and explaining everything, i think i might be a moral relativist. or perhaps merely a moral realist? further study is required.




it is a recent experience for me to realize that i do not think like others, that ideas and concepts which are obvious and simple to me are confusing and confounding by others; and that likewise, there exists an entire world with which most people are well acclimated, and i am a complete stranger.

to resolve these issues, i want to ask people questions, but i cannot quite think of the questions i want to ask; 'am i human', 'do i seem to understand the world as well as the average person', 'do i ever seem to just not get something simple' all come to mind, yet they dont seem to quite suit this. additionally, the general unwillingness to clearly express impressions of failure is set to counter any efforts i make to study this problem.

i suppose that the problem is really one of communication, and the the solution would be to greatly increase the amount of communication in which i take part. why then do i seem to be communicating less than ever?