The Life of Pi

I just finished reading The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I found it really interesting and can't wait to discuss it in depth with someone. Like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the back of the book contains some "Discussion Questions". Although they are supposed to be thought provoking I found the presented questions incredibly bland for such a richly filled story. So I hope to actually discuss the depths of the novel. I don't think I can even write any kind of summary here without spoiling the book, so I will simply state that it was interesting and I will thoroughly enjoy analyzing it. If you're into contemporary philosophical type reads I'd recommend it. Anyone that enjoys either Life of Pi or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will likely enjoy the other as well (Zen isn't nearly as brutal, fyi).

So, if you've read it, let's talk. If you haven't read it, read it, and then let's talk. We can start with: What would you do for survival? --Discuss on multiple levels: physical, mental, moral, meta-physical, etc...

Crazy is as Crazy Does?

I've had this thought process occur a few times and each time it becomes somewhat disconcerting until I decide to just not dwell on it any longer. There is no satisfactory conclusion to draw, thus one must simply give up in order to be satisfied.

Can a crazy person know that they are crazy? Really, think about it for a while. It would seem that if a crazy person could they would logically sit down and sort through their thoughts and realize that certain inconsistencies exist that provide evidence of their insanity. I have not done extensive research on the matter, and if the movie "A Beautiful Mind" holds any validity on this point (I'll ignore the fact they they totally botched the concept of a Nash Equilibrium) we can believe that certain people with certain disorders can discover these flaws in their psychosis and rationally conclude that certain parts of their "reality" are not, in fact, "real."

What about the many other individuals who, rather than manage to discover their mind's fallacies, instead spend their lives in a dream world? These types of individuals seem to weave incredible scenarios within their heads about who they are and what they do. Suppose for a minute that you are one of these people.

As I've wandered upon this thought process it doesn't lead anywhere reassuring. For example, when I was in Chicago in the middle of July I hypothesized to the people I was with this very notion. I suggested that perhaps my mind was weaving this intricate idea of us being there for a Computer Science conference. In "reality" I was being brought to Chicago to see a specialist about some mental disorder. My mind doesn't like this idea and so instead I attend meetings at this conference all day when in "reality" I'm actually in sessions with medical doctors (rather than CS doctorate holders). I don't have any way that I can think of to prove that this wasn't the case. My mind, being the interestingly powerful mediator between my thoughts and the world, could just as easily rewrite my other experiences to fit the world that it wants me to be in.

The only way out that I have been able to come up with is the same argument you have to make when dealing with certain philosophical stances. In fact the situation boils down to the same thing, so conveniently the same way out of the pit works. At some point you have to give up on trying to define "reality" based on your senses, since (as I've just gone through) you can argue all day about your senses lying to you. Instead you have to simply accept as reality whatever your senses report to you, there's not much else you can do. You may be trapped in the Matrix, but you still have to work within it, so you must accept the Matrix as your reality.

So I may be crazy for all I know, but there's nothing I can do about it from within my mind, since my sensory data doesn't lend any evidence to solidify any insanity that might be kicking about. So instead I simply go about my business with the data my mind provides and apologize to everyone if I actually am crazy and you all just put up with me. I have no way of telling.

The mind of a Halo terrorist

Clive Thompson provides an interesting glimpse into the minds of suicide bombers. His experience in getting creamed playing Halo 3 online drove him to develop a new strategy, one which he quickly discovered was essentially suicide bombing. Why does it work you ask? Halo awards points for kills, but does not punish for deaths. So if you're about to die anyways, you can run crazy at your opponent and then stick a plasma grenade to their face as you crumple to the ground in a heap. And a few seconds later, they die too. So one could see how if a person believes wholeheartedly that they will die regardless of their actions, their most rational course of actions is to take out as many of their enemies as they can when they go. If your points are tallied by how many bad guys you kill, then you need to kill as many as you can before you die. And if you believe that anyone that doesn't believe as you do is a bad guy, then, well, that's what happens. Yes, it is a warped way of thinking, but within that mindset suicide bombing is the only rational thing to do.

The mind is a fascinating thing, which can be twisted and screwed up in so many fascinating ways....

Dealing with life

Do you ever get the feeling that you're only an observer in your own life?

Lately I've been feeling like I see my life happening, but I'm not really controlling it. Not like I feel helpless that I have can't control things that happen to me; but that I'm simply watching my life occur, without being an active participant. Like watching a TV show, you observe, but you don't feel anxious that you're not changing what's happening, you're just a passive participant of the character's lives. I had this feeling growing in me noticeably for the past few days, although I suspect it's been around much longer than that. I think it may be connected with going through a stage of mild depression.


Now for something completely different:

I think my dream job might be as a professional thinker, analyzer, and advice-giver. I enjoy thinking about challenging problems, digging into them and picking them apart, and then providing insight; but I find that I don't much enjoy implementing those ideas. *GASP* I'm a THEORIST! Hm, I wonder how that happened. I'm fairly certain I was not a theorist 3 years ago. At that point in time I would have much rather have solved a problem by implementing a solution, rather than analyzing it and providing a theoretical solution, but not actually carrying it out. Now I would prefer to think it through, come up with an answer, and leave it to someone else to implement.

I see this trend in a number of my activities. I think it suggests I would rather be in a management position than an underling position. Which is interesting, because, again, 3 years ago I would have been content to just be given a project, and then complete it. Now I would find that particularly frustrating. I would rather make the design decisions and pass those on to the code monkeys. It is definitely a good thing I decided to get a Master's degree. I think I would have become miserable in an entry level job by now. I wonder if I should get a PhD.

An interesting idea

This was an interesting idea that has prompted a 20+ minute conversation in my lab.

Approach a girl and hand her a $20 bill. Tell her, "Here's twenty bucks, if you'd like to go on a date, I'll take it back and use it to pay for the date; otherwise, keep it."


Please discuss the implications of such an action. How each side might feel about it. What the result may be. Et cetera. I'm not going to discuss where it took our conversation, but it was very interesting to talk about.

A CS678 Narrative

The system had continued processing well past the predicted length of time needed for an answer. (Apparently those pesky constants really do make a difference when analyzing time complexity of an algorithm.) So while the massive project kept on churning away, the operators waited. The program had been in place for a long time and development had hit many demoralizing setbacks. However, The results of this experiment would be monumental, and the work continued unabated.
The first set of clunky, slow, and cumbersome behemoths had to be scrapped completely. The costs had been astronomical, overshadowed only by the catastrophic failure, of which the rotting hulks were a constant, painful reminder. No useful data was collected from this initial batch except the knowledge of a few designs that didn't work. They lacked a common API and inter-unit communication was non-existent. Once these details were understood it was no real surprise that the units seemed incapable of learning anything which could be considered particularly intelligent.
The purpose of the research had been to study multi-agent interaction in an open environment governed only by very loose goals and expectations. The explicit-communication breakdown between units had, of course, made this much less interesting. The results of the implicit-communication of studying opponent actions was more of a novelty than anything of real value. Of course there were many who found this action-orientated communication to be fascinating and an entire faction of the project broke away to pursue the idea further. Their work progressed much more quickly as they needed not spend time developing a common communications interface for the various designs. Thousands of prototypes were built and the successful ones entered full-scale production. Many of the design groups did begin adding primitive communications, but these systems never progressed much beyond basic commands like, “come”, “go”, “help”, “run away” or similar, basic phrase-concepts.
After many years of development the original group produced a prototype that had a strong grasp of a complete language for interfacing. They fittingly referred to this prototype as “Adam”. Seeing that Adam appeared to fulfill the majority of requirements set forth at the beginning of the project, full-scale production of this design began. The interaction between agents started without much excitement. The units acknowledged each others' existence and set about exploring the world.
One of the loose goals built into the systems was to increase the number of “friends” they had within their environment. In order to foster these friendships the agents began sharing information with each other about their knowledge of the world so far, saving each unit time and energy (conserving energy was another goal, and the designers linked the system's power infrastructure to the sun to make this goal more meaningful).
The first deviation from the cooperative interaction came along fairly quickly. Two agents had both obtained information about an energy source. Hoping to foster friendships they raced back to the main group to share their newly acquired knowledge. One of the systems determined that if the other returned first that it would build the friendships and the one to arrive second would have nothing of value to offer the group. Considering the value of the information and of friendships the agent decided it would be more in his interest to prevent the other agent from returning at all, lose the value of that friendship, but gain the value from sharing the energy source information with the remaining agents. The first betrayal had been made, to signify the event the betraying agent was called “Cain”. Cain continued to develop self-serving attitudes that ignored the consequences inflicted upon the other agents. Learning from this behavior the other agents became less cooperative for fear that they might be the victim of another Cain.
As more and more agents were introduced into the environment there began to be competition over the provided energy sources. It was no longer possible for the agents to all share the available supplies and some began banding together to secure a single source and protect it from non-cooperating agents. This behavior grew and eventually the factions grew too large for their energy sources. Many agents were forced away and simply ran out of energy. More sources were added into the environment and to make things more interesting existing sources were moved or removed to spark interaction. The interesting result was that when a source was removed the agents cooperating for the resource usually panicked and stopped cooperating as they searched for another source. Eventually it was determined that using the entire group to take over a smaller group would be more effective and large scale “wars” began.
Agents began developing more effective means of “battling” and types of weapons were created. This type of behavior continued for long periods of time with only short intervals of cooperation when energy sources were abundant. The operators of the system began to be very curious about the behavior of the agents, and began experimenting by providing opposing groups with different capabilities. New types of resources were added forcing groups to at least try cooperating if they wanted access to each of them.
Amazingly, the groups of agents generally refused to cooperate with each other so long as they each had control of at least some of each resource and a large enough group to maintain that control. The designers and operators repeatedly tried to provide incentives for cooperation, but progress was slow and the groups generally decided they could do better by not cooperating.
A final experiment for the system was decided on. A new weapon would be given to the groups at random. This weapon would give the controlling groups the ability to wipe out other groups in a very short amount of time. The operators waited on outcome of this ultimate test. What would happen when more than one group had this capability?
It has been 62 years since the fission bomb was introduced to the world. After two devastating uses the opposing groups decided that perhaps the weapon was too powerful and agreed to not use it, but continued to threaten each other with it. The greatest experiment in multi-agent interaction is nearing the end of its needed computation time. The operators of the system Earth will soon discover how the agent design type 'Human' will end: as a cooperative collective, or in a nuclear holocaust.

Be Someone

Fairly often my thoughts turn to some rather unusual processes. For instance, have you ever really thought about 'time'? Can you come up with a truly satisfactory answer for "What is time?" I can't, and that bothers me sometimes. Our existence on earth as mortals is entwined with a linear time, things occur in succession from one moment to the next. If we are to understand anything from the scriptures about time, we must concede that time is not simply linear. But, if it's not simply linear, in what fashion will we then interact with time? If life will be in any similar to our current existence it seems that at least moments of time must be linearly arranged. It takes time to do things. By the time you finish reading this sentence, or word, or letter, time will have passed. The only way for existence to make any sense is if you can read this sentence in order and comprehend what it's saying based on the linear arrangement of the words; which takes time. So time must be linear, but supposedly is not simply linear. I am really curious to know how God interacts with mortal events if time is not simply linear, it must be a fascinating existence.

As my mind delves into the realm of abstract philosophy I also find myself wishing I were part of something big. I read books and immerse myself into another existence, and dream that I could be a real part of something like that. To know for sure that I'm fighting the good fight, and that my actions will recorded in history and told as stories. To be in something larger than life. To play a real role that people take notice of. To make a difference. But life isn't like that, at least not for me. Oh sure, some people will talk about how we're all playing that part in our own lives in some way; but I don't want to just be playing the part of CPM in CPM's boring life. I want to set out on an adventure that will become my life for a long period of time. To go places and do things that no one else does. I guess I just feel like the world has become too small for my desires of adventure. When you can get anywhere in the world in 24 hours, it just doesn't seem like a real adventure. And, of course, I have no goal to reach at the end of any journey I may take.

I dunno, I just want to be part of something meaningful, to be someone.

Boredom

I work from home these days. I get incredibly bored. The most exciting part of my day, often times, is when I walk around the corner of the building to get the mail. Oddly, I find myself craving human interaction, but also have lost the motivation to date. I guess I've reached one of those points in life, again, where it just doesn't seem like it's worth it.

I'm starting to get used to the idea that I will live alone. I'll get my Master's degree in a couple years, find a job, buy a house, and live by myself -- potentially with a cat. This is not to say that I want to live alone. For the longest time I pictured my future involving at least a wife, and at some point a family. It was difficult to see myself living alone. Sadly, the visions have switched places now. I can much more easily see myself living by myself than having a family. I do have a fair bit of artwork to keep me company-- and my books.

Speaking of books: I've finished "Atlas Shrugged" over the weekend. While it does contain some nice arguments about various subjects, the overall theme seemed to be that purely socialistic policies will destroy a nation. Personally, I can't say it's one of the greatest works I've ever read, but it was pretty good. I also started and finished "The Philosopher at the End of the Universe" which is a foray into various philosophical ideologies as presented in modern science fiction movies. It was a fun read, lots of personality in the writing. Now I'm about half way through "Nickel and Dimed" which discusses the despicable conditions of the wage-slave class in the United States. Oddly, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, has a Ph.D. in Biology, but writes for a living.

Those are all the random thoughts I have for the moment. Hope you enjoyed them.

Oh, and I still don't have anywhere to live come fall. I was supposed to go view a condo today, and 30 minutes before the appointment the management company called to cancel because they had just signed someone else. Thanks.

Why?

So, over the years I have had a number friends who are girls, as well as a few girlfriends. In my recollection I think that at some point in conversations with these girls many of them have said something along the lines of "Curious Physics Minor, why are you so nice to me?" And I think to myself what a sad statement that really is. I don't think that I'm overly nice, I'm just me. But I'm learning that I must be wrong in my hope that most guys are nice to girls, because, apparently, that isn't the case. Which makes me sad. Why aren't people nicer to each other, and more specifically, why aren't guys nicer to girls? Why do girls put up with guys that aren't nice to them?

I remember a friend I had in high school. She was in a bad relationship for something like 2 years before a small group of us that cared convinced her that the guy was a bastard (pardon my French). He insulted her, blamed her for his problems, pretty much just treated her like crap; but she'd always say things like, "He's not so bad", "He apologizes afterwards", "He's nice sometimes". We'd just shake our heads and feel sad for her. She finally got out of the relationship, and has since hopped from bad relationship to bad relationship. She tells me she's in a good relationship now, which I really hope is true because she's a great girl.

So.

Guys, shape up and be nice to girls.

Girls, don't put up with jerks. Kick them out on the street and don't let them come back.

Philosophy from Atlas Shrugged

I've bee reading Atlas Shrugged, it having been recommended to me a number of times. It's a long book, 1168 pages, and takes a little while to get going, but I'm quite enjoying it now (pg 533). I've come across two monologues that I really liked. One was by the character Francisco D'Anconia, and it pertained to the true nature of money and how hard money (meaning things that were valued in and of themselves: gold, silver, etc) was a mark of a prosperous civilization. Without hard money a nation will never progress at a rate rapid enough to amount to anything. Our current system is based on fiat money, it has value simply because the government says it has value. While this is better than a barter system, it is still much more volatile than a hard money system. Fiat money systems can be controlled and manipulated by persons in power, simply by decreeing a change in the system. Anyways, I don't remember the whole monologue, but it was quite impressive, and didn't use the strict terminology I've employed here.

The second monologue I found just as interesting though, and provided a new look into the human mind. It begins on page 489 in my book, in the chapter entitled "The Sanction of the Victim"; it is also given by Francisco D'Anconia.

" ... The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think-- for the same reason-- that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you-- just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but is own enjoyment-- just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!-- an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired, and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience-- or to fake-- a sense of self-esteem.

.....

Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws-- and he will have to cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find.... He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex-- nothing but shame."

Just some things to think about.

Short Circuit 2

My apartment watched Short Circuit 2 last night. As I was watching it, I became really excited about a book I bought last semester but haven't had a chance to read yet. It's something about Philosophy as explained by Science Fiction Movies. I need to get through the final 3/5 of Atlas Shrugged so that I can read that book. The main human character of the movie is, of course, a complete geek who happens to have feelings for the main female lead. He enters into a conversation with Johnny 5 about human relationships and how complicated they are. For some reason I found it really interesting when he explained something about how there are 6 billion of us on this planet but even getting just two together in a meaningful way seems so impossible at times. Then Johnny 5 tried to express his feelings of loneliness and depression, and relate them to the many things he had read in the books; part of me wishes I didn't know quite so well what he meant.

Anywho, I'm hoping that I'll find something fun to do this weekend; or at least get a bunch of reading done.