Brain Droppings III

Brain Droppings I: http://minutelogic.blogspot.com/2013/05/brain-droppings.html

Brain Droppings II: http://minutelogic.blogspot.com/2014/06/brain-droppings-ii.html


Once a upon a time, men made the smartest machine ever built and asked it one question: "Is there a god?" and the machine replied: "There is now."


Other people have imperfect lives too, contrary to what Facebook often suggests… Just deal with things one step at a time and think about all the good things you have.


“A friend once came to me and said he wish he could play the piano as well as I can. I told him that he didn’t. Just likes the thought of it, otherwise he would already be playing the piano. To be an expert you have to practice eight hours a day, day after day. It’s a labor of love."


People care too much about what other people think. Moreover, other people are too busy worrying about what other people think of them to care about what they think about you. I find it funny that the same reason why people get scared is the same reason why there isn't much of a reason to be scared at all. A few people are douchebags but really, who cares what they think? If somebody is small enough of a person to confront and attack people who are different for no good reason then doesn't that automatically disqualify their opinions because it has no merit?


Willpower and balls are not things you have forever once you've obtained them. For example, you can work up the courage to ask a girl out one time, but that doesn't mean you'll have the courage to do it again in the future. It might be easier, yes, but it's still a struggle. And sometimes we say things like 'I don't care what others think' but in reality we do, and far too much. It's good to ask yourself whether you really do what you preach.


A lot of general tech Youtubers present information to me that isn't all that informative. I'm talking about the Youtubers that review tech and talk about tech in general. I call them 'generalists' because they look at many things. They don't have the time to look at any one thing with great depth. Because of this, when some Youtubers talk about areas I personally spent a lot of time investigating, I can tell when they say something inaccurate. Once in a while the Youtuber himself would actually respond, but I've yet to see any of them actually correct their mistake in video.


I hate it when reviews praise everything. If I had to make a tech Youtube channel, my spin on things, the thing that would make me stand out, is my unrelentless need to criticize everything. If EVERYTHING is perfect, then I might as well flip a coin and pick a product. NOTHING is perfect. And when we try to pick at every little thing, we might even discover new ways to judge a product, new functionalities that might be useful, etc.


I don't understand why people feel like they can just CLAIM things to be true and get angry when people ask for evidence. Saying 'Look it up yourself' is a cop-out and would never work in a debate. This to me is a direct consequence of people not debating enough in this world.


Don’t you ever feel like, after sex, that you are just an animal that indulged in a primal instinct to reproduce because evolution says so? Although to be fair, the same thing can be said for eating. And sleeping.


Somebody once told me that love is just 'a bunch of chemicals' happening in the head. Cool story bro? And guess what, humans are just arrangements of different atoms. The point is that the sum is greater than its parts. Breaking things down to such basic parts doesn't mean anything. The fact that love is just a bunch of chemicals doesn't make its effects any less true to the people in love. Or sex. Saying sex is simply something people do because of evolution is also trivializing the experience for the people involved, I think. I mean, does this guy break EVERYTHING down to such basics? Everything is just a bunch of atoms flying around, who cares about anything anymore? It's just atoms.


I don't think a sexist remark is any worse than any other all-around-insulting insult. Big deal, another stupid person said another stupid shit. Regardless of your own sex, gender, sexual orientation, or race, they'll find an insult to match. So you see, it's not about you, it's about them. And that's another thing: We're all so ready to jump on people who say something that might remotely be considered sexist, we don't realize that there are many other ways to discriminate people. For example, by age. When people bring up my race in a debate they know they're losing sanity points. But when they bring up my age for no reason with stereotypes and basically ad hominem attacks, somehow that's more acceptable. Older adults have to win an argument with reason and evidence just like the rest of us. Talking about my age just makes them a fallacious prick.


So uh, I was slicing cabbage at work one day when a thought dawned on me... This is about moral relativism. You can ask the fundamental question, "What is good? How can you logically prove to me that suffering in the pit of despair is bad and well-being is good?" Well-being is good because we deemed it so, just like how we assigned a meaning to what the word "good" means. You can say that this means morality IS relative but as I've mentioned in my book, I think this kind of thinking is too fundamental to be any use to society. It's academic. Nothing can ever be known with absolute certainty, morality is relative, blah blah blah. Only useful in philosophical discussions, really. Because what matters with certainty is that people are certain enough of something to act based on their beliefs. What matters with morality is that human beings in general have many things in common and we can decide as a society what is good and what is bad. So: Do I think morality is relative? Yes, but relative in a way that means nothing practically speaking.


"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -Henry Ford


I think intuition is more limited than we think it is, and that's the danger. If the world was intuitive, we wouldn't need science. We wouldn't bother to set up experiments. After all, everything revolves around the earth. Common sense deals with realms that are common to us - eg, African savanna. That sort of common sense won't work when we're dealing with realms foreign to us - like particle physics. If I asked you how thick would a Sunday Times newspaper folded 100 times be, you may respond by saying it would be as thick as a brick, when the answer is 6 billion light years across. I think intuition is useful as a starting point of investigation, but not as the ending point. Not everything can be tested in reality, so some ideas that come about partially from intuition has a place in science, but we must be careful to note what evidence we have and how sure we are about our beliefs.


On the virgin birth: Cool, a guy was born without a dad having sex with the mother. Do you know how many animals on earth can do that already?


'Wouldn't it be cool if Zombies & Vampires became human if we bit them first? Somebody needs to test that hypothesis.' -Neil deGrasse Tyson


"Pain is temporary. It may last for an hour, a day, even a year. If I give up however, it will last forever." – Eric Thomas


"I wonder if Farm Animals think deep thoughts while standing around doing nothing. I also wonder if they wonder the same of us" –Neil deGrasse Tyson


In MMORPGs people are often focused on gaining more money and being stronger when in fact the funnest moments of the game is when we screw around and do stupid stuff. Feels like this is very comparable to real life.


I gave a lengthy response (by Youtube standards) to some commenters for a video talking about a young girl who underwent sexual reassignment surgery to be a girl. I thought it was interesting.

"I think defining sex is trickier than some people think it is. If a person has sexual organs of both "sexes", then is the person male or female? I don't particularly care for a technical scientific answer, if a satisfactory answer can even be given... We don't live life according to the classifications of hardcore science. I mean, do you see yourself as a person, a human being, or a mammalian animal, a homo sapien? Probably the former. Do you care about what class of plants the tomato plant is from? No. You can classify the plant in any number of classes and orders and divisions and families, IDC. What we care about is whether the tomato tastes good.


And the question of whether we should address somebody by their sex or their gender... Which may or may not be a grammatical debate. Which I would argue might not matter because grammar rules can be bent with time, and grammar and semantics of these words came about through history and the opinions/habits of people in the past. Does it make more sense to say 'he' or 'she' based upon gender or sex? Should politeness affect our judgement?

At the end of the day though, even if she is technically a male, to me it's just a label. To me she is at a point where I cannot distinguish her from a cisgendered female and looks better than many cisgendered female out there. Surely there is more we think of when we think of a female than just her sexual organs? Besides, I bet surgery's got her covered there as well.

Now, one of you brought up the argument that the doctor gave her such a life-changing procedure too early on in her life. I don't know. I don't think anyone of us here really knows whether that's the case. We're not even fucking legitly transgender or psychologists. As if even those two groups of people really know for sure. But I can see where you are coming from, but it's also irrelevant to my original post.

I don't think the people intent on calling her a 'he' thought about all this. Their thought process beginning with 'That's fucking weird" and ending right there."


"When 3 people have sex... it's a threesome... when 2 people have sex... it's a twosome... now i see why they call you handsome."


"If money grew on trees, it would be as valuable as leavers." - Wonderwhy, on inflation.


I bet you can get tupacs of eminems with 50 cents.


“Science does not answer the "why" because the "why" is a retarded question.“ – Jacob Lively


“The plural of anecdote is not data.” Dr. Aaron Carol


shauarma0 on Youtube posted a comment I felt was insightful. It was on a video for Martin Garrix's "Animals", a hit track with I think... dubstep elements. The video isn't that eye-opening, it's a bunch of guys trashing cars and drinking, etc. Shauarma0 said that some people need to "forget how generic a song sounds, how simple the production is, how talentless the producer is AND JUST FOCUS ON HOW IT MAKES THEM FEEL." Really though. That's true.


Ok, I'll close with my opinions about PewDiePie. PewDiePie for those of you that don't know, is the largest Youtuber in the world, with like 35 million subscribers. He makes video game commentary. They are generally very silly and feature him screaming and doing weird things. A lot of people look down upon him for doing that. My opninion is that he is not doing any harm to the world, he is supplying entertainment where there is demand for it. Given the same opportunity I would do the same thing he does because it makes a lot of money. He is just reacting to what the market wants. If nobody likes his videos, his personality wouldn't exist. And that's another thing. It's a personality. From my limited experience, PewDiePie seems like a pretty decent guy outside of his character. Probably pretty intelligent, since it takes intelligence to make the largest Youtube channel in the world. You might be able to make a viral video or two by sheer luck, but sustained audience retention takes skills.