Thoughts on "The Fappening"

Hey.

If you still don't know by now, about a week ago somebody managed to "hack" into many celebrities' iCloud accounts and steal their private pictures. This person released a lot of them onto the internet. I ended up having more to say about this topic than I originally thought. Ok, first let's talk about the actual situation.

Actresses are people. They're not goddesses. They are people. Nobody is "perfectly pure". This notion that the ideal girl is irresistibly sexy, wears beautiful, pretty, cute clothing and makeup for you, yet is somehow sexually innocent, well, that's not only naive, it can backfire on you. What type of idiot girl has no idea about sex at all as an adult? In a child it might be cute, but not in adults. In adults it's ignorance about something that is (to many people at least) an important part of life. It's a fantasy. Fantasies have their place, but you don't want that stuff in reality.

Back on topic. Why is taking nude pictures of yourself somehow immoral? It makes no sense to me. Now, I don't get why people do that. Somebody tried to defend the actresses by saying "Well, everybody takes nude pictures of themselves..." to which I reply... No, lol. I don't? It's like making a sex tape. Just because you like doing that stuff doesn't mean everybody does. It's weird to me, but not immoral. Like, seriously. What sort of suffering is that going to cause? In the end, no matter what you say, you do eventually have to acknowledge that the fault is on the guy who illegally hacked into other people's accounts to steal their private photos. The photos can be any type of photos, even photos of their favorite cat. But it's private. You shouldn't touch that. Ok? Can we get this out of the way? The fault is really on the guy who did all this. (Well, assuming it's a guy. Could be a girl, you never know.) This is more than a scandal, it's also involving a criminal act.

Apple's value dropped a lot because of this incident. What I heard was that the accounts weren't "hacked" per se. The guy just managed to guess the recovery question answers or their passwords. Many people will say that people shouldn't post anything to the internet if they don't want it to be exposed. Do you say this kind of stuff for your bank account password? Your Paypal password? Your Paypal account balance? I don't think so. So don't tell me that we all should be super-duper careful. Yes, actresses tend to get more attention, so they are a prime target for these kinds of attacks, so they should be more careful. This is true. But they are also just people. Not everybody is super electronics-security-conscious. We all have gaps in our knowledge, things we probably should know but don't. It's not totally ridiculous that an actress would stick to this level of security, because this level of security has worked well in the past and for many other people. You can't even "victim blame" by accusing the girls of doing stupid shit. They stored photos under password key and lock.

Here's a tip if you are worried about security: For your security questions, don't answer them honestly. Make up a fake answer you'll remember. Even better, make all of your passwords or answers off-topic password phrases. It beats adding weird symbols to your password and it's easier to remember. If you're an actress, many small details of your life have already been leaked without knowing. This makes them even more vulnerable.

Speaking of "victim blaming". I've been discussing this whole Fappening situation with some people and it's really annoying me. The first person I talked to basically verbally rained down hell on me for not going out there and exclaiming in all caps about just how outraged I am. Like, great. Whoever did this was wrong to do what they did. No fucking shit. What else is there to talk about in this case besides rattling on about how angry you are? Shit happens, what do you want ME to do? He also annoyed me greatly because 1) It was a complete circlejerk because that's what you get when you post on other people's Facebook posts, their friends already have similar ideologies and can't hold their boner for attacking the odd duck out and 2) Somehow, because I am young, my opinions are discounted and it's acceptable to use language particularly suited for attacking young people. Which I find hilarious because I'm positive this guy would be the first to get super insulted when any sort of racist or god-forbid, sexist comment get used at anybody. It's as if, being more angry about something happening makes you more moral. Funny. I am not "victim blaming" because I trivialize the celebrities' anger over this entire incidence. Shit just fucking happens. Out of all the things that could happen to you, having nudes released is a pretty benign tragedy. Last July, some asshole smashed a window on my car. I was angry, but not even for that long. It happened to ME, so I was angry, yes. But I see no reason for other people to get as angry or more angry than I am. It's as if they should be more offended than I am, which I find awkward and foolish. Around the world, tons of people have their entire cars wrecked, their entire lives wrecked (either by damages or being accused of being the person who inflicted such damage to others). Other people are being enslaved and brainwashed. Many are starving. Actresses are still privileged people, by worldwide standards and even American standards. They don't have to be actresses if they don't want to be. It's not like somebody thrust upon them, all the fame and money and they just want out. They will be alright next month, despite whatever nudes were released. I'm serious. They'll get over it. It's not really that bad.

There's child porn and all sorts of black-market info everywhere. Countries are committing cybercrimes against each other, stealing company and country secrets. And we are chiefly offended by what nudes were released? Give me a break. Even among the mundane things in our lives which annoy us, I don't feel having nudes released even ranks near the top in terms of frustration. Having a shitty, abusive girlfriend or boyfriend, getting fire and struggling to make ends meet, hell having to work 40 hours a week, all of these things in my opinion totally outweigh whatever suffering I might get if some nudes somehow appeared from thin air and got released all over the internet. I might even joke about it and ask, "You like what you see? ;)"

On the other hand, somebody on Youtube comments made a comment basically attacking the girls for putting pictures online that they didn't want to get leaked, talking about the NSA (riiiight, because the NSA is totally going to leak your nude photos to the public!). And then he went on to attack the news media for focusing more on The Fappening than other more important items, like war, famine, etc. This has some merit, in that the people who write for news networks ought to focus on what is more important to the entire world instead of focusing on stuff we'll all forget the next day. Famine isn't something that just disappears because you don't think about it. But my question is this:

If the priorities of a news station (in terms of what they investigate and care about) is totally off, causing the Youtuber to be mad, doesn't that mean people who have priorities totally wrong would also get him all riled up? Then that's the problem: We all have our own interests. It's very easy to attack people who care about celebrities. It's really a cheapshot when in reality, we're preoccupied by many other things which don't contribute to the well-being of the world, and we think about those things more than say, famine. In some ways, we're all no better. We have no high-horse to speak of. Comments that are short (typically one-liners), sensationalist, simple, and attacks something that seems easy to attack all tend to get a lot of "likes" on social media and on Youtube. They obviously cannot contain serious content because of its brevity, but they are often flat out wrong as well. In this case, for the people who took the like-bait and liked the comment victim-shaming the celebrities and attacking news media for covering the topic, they are ironically liking a comment that leads to a train of though which actually insults them. (Yeah, takes a while to figure that long sentence out. Sorry.)

It is true, at least in my eyes, that spreading this "The Fappening" photos all over the internet is actually an immoral thing to do. It should stop. But we have to think about the difference between what would happen ideally versus what should be done. If you cover it up, you are risking a major backfire. You ever heard of the Streissand Effect? When you try to suppress a scandal, it can just make things worse by bringing more attention to the situation. You will not significantly impact the spread of the pictures on the internet now it's out there. I think the best course of action is to let the whole thing blow by. Sure, do some FBI investigations behind the scenes if you wish to see if you can catch the guy who committed this crime. But trying to stop the internet from spreading stuff just demonstrates a person's ignorance about how the internet works. The internet never truly forgets, but it has the attention span of a 5 year old kid.

Somebody brought up an interesting point. Naked girls are everywhere on the internet. What is so special about the boobs of a girl who happened to be in some movies? Absent of all their makeup and fancy Hollywood crap, they're not even THAT good looking anyways. From a consumer standpoint, it's probably best to head straight for some normal porn material instead.

Ramblings

Hello!

Today I want to talk about what I don't know. Over time I've had some thoughts about my what I know, what I don't know, and my ability to sort through what is or isn't true. I've come to realize that I really know quite little. And honestly, I swear: This isn't me trying to sound wise by saying I know I don't know many things. I know I've said in the past that "If I knew everything I wouldn't need to help of any experts". But honestly, sometimes I go read an article on Wikipedia or I read a debate and I cannot understand what they hell people are saying. The things I don't know become a liability when I go out and debate somebody. It's like the fear of the unknown.

Thing is though, just because somebody has more knowledge than me doesn't mean they can't be mistaken in something simple. You can be a neurosurgeon but have false beliefs about God. I don't find it arrogant to say I am superior to the neurosurgeon in theology. It is a statement of fact. Of course, most things in life I have not examined as closely as religion, so my certainty goes down. Many things I don't know much about, so I can only give my current thoughts and my intuition. When I tread on new territory, I'm always changing my opinions because new information and arguments come in. This is what prevents me from being utterly humiliating in many situations. But I'm sure we all have been humiliated in the past. You just take the experience, learn from it, and move on as quickly as you can. Try not to dwell on it and argue with the person who proved you wrong. Nobody wants a person who is wrong and cannot accept it.

When I think about large issues, my brain is overloaded, and I'm almost withdrawn from it. This is because there are so many factors, so many ideas, so many possibilities. How the hell do I ever figure out which is the best? Well, you don't. You can't. Because many things in the real world, there is only time for one choice. If we elect A into office, we will never truly know what B would have done. It's far from a scientific experiment. In arguments regarding broad and complex topics, it's very easy to be convinced by a stupid argument that sounds good. This is why I am very hesitant to go into politics at all. What use is there if I just wing it, halfway? None. I should either not deal with politics or be an expert at it. Being half-right is being wrong. Of course, nobody is infallible. No expert that uses big words or has written many books or given many speeches is infallible. Nobody knows everything, but at the end of the day, something must be done. So, I suppose, many people wander around, trying to get their take on politics or problems with the world and try shape the world to their beliefs. If we all stopped trying to fix the world until we're all positively sure we know every possibility, nobody would be doing anything. On the other hand, not knowing everything causes people to make big mistakes when trying to "decrease worldsuck", as John Green would say. But I know that world issues are far beyond me. I don't even know what is best for everybody, let alone how to achieve it. Sorry. I just stick to whatever interests me, be it from religion to more mundane things like video games.

And I smart? Honestly, I don't know. I do the best I can. Sometimes I feel like an idiot. Sometimes I feel smart. But I suspect that's how it goes for most people. But sometimes, people say things that are so ridiculously stupid, it tickles my brain. Whatever level that guy is on, I'm above him. Which isn't saying much. Being better than crap doesn't make you awesome, it just means you're better than garbage. There are 7 billion people on this planet! 7 billion! That's such a big number. I cannot imagine half that or a quarter of that or a hundredth of that. There are so many people, and combined they know so much my mind cannot even comprehend it. Maybe I shouldn't think about the idiots. Thinking about trash doesn't help me get better at anything. And even if I am great, the idea is to not rest on your laurels. Always trying to make tomorrow better than today.

I recognize that I've changed a lot in the past 2-3 years in which I started to pull my head out from Runescape to think about other things. I think I will continue to change. It's like, "Eric 2.0". Continual evolution. Sometimes I wonder what a future version of me would say to me. I've stopped trying to engage in religious debates because for me, the matter is already settled, and I'm tired of trying to convince everybody. It's time to move on from this subject and go into new territory. A few years ago, I wanted to be the best. Not everything, of course. But best at something. I guess over time my own goals have mellowed out. I'm just me and I'll do what I think I should.

I think humbleness and perspective are things we need to beat into ourselves over and over, time and time again. At least that's how it works for me. When I feel TOO smart, when I feel like I truly deserve everything I have, I need to force myself to think about the things I don't know and the suffering others have going on this instant. Then, I am brought back down to earth. I'm rambling here. But have you thought about just how large the universe is, and how ridiculously small we are? How small our troubles are. How insignificant it is to the scale of the universe. That we are just animals that exist and will die in the next cosmic eyeblink. But we can't really step out of our perspective. After all we view our entire world through our eyes, through our lens which filter out information we don't want to see. We know our troubles are small, but we cannot let go. It's almost like knowing sex is simply an impulse that was necessary for reproduction for the continuation of our species but still not being able to shake off the need for it. You know, my brother once told me something interesting: "We are all drug addicts", he claimed. What we do, we do to obtain happiness, which is really only a bunch of mental states, like chemicals produced by the brain. We are all drug addicts. How about that, huh? I've never had sex, but when I've jacked off in the past, I did think to myself "Gee, evolution has defeated me again." A split second change in chemicals and all of a sudden, the way I thought changed completely.

And if you thought that the above wasn't super epic, well, didja read the title? I'll leave the rest for another time. I've gone on long enough. :)

Headfi Meet 2014 - My Thoughts

Hi.

This is not a philosophical, logical, mind-bending blog entry. Nope. If that's all you look for in this blog, turn around and wait for the next post. Today I want to talk about my experience at an event I went to, followed up by general thoughts on audio as a hobby. Rest assured, I'm not turning this into an audio blog.

On 7-19-2014 there was a Headfi meet. Headfi is the largest audio forum for audio gear as far as I know. As the name hints, it is centered around headphones. I will talk a little bit more about my thoughts on Headfi a little later. Headfi had a meet, which is where forum members come together and bring their audio gear for other people to try out. Some companies send some of their gear and their representatives to showcase what they have. It's $20 to get in per person. Not bad, considering it was $15 if you buy ahead of time, plus the event took place in a hotel and booking multiple rooms probably costed them quite a bit. There was a raffle where over a thousand dollars of stuff were given away. Unfortunately, I could not stay for over three hours.

I brought along two friends. One had to get me there and became my camera man. He tried all of the headphones and earphones and said he was not impressed. He's a bit of an odd one. He swears by his $30 earphones, the Razer Morays. Razer is not known to quality audio products and instead caters to the mainstream gaming crowd that cares about flash over substance. And the Morays are not even their highest-end offering. Yet he insists that his earphones, while not 'as accurate', is 'more like a real concert'. I listened to his earphones and it sounded like utter garbage. I'd rather listen to my car speakers. And my car is a 1996 Toyota Corolla. He had some funky EQ, and after he turned it off, it was a lot better. Nice for a $30 earphone I think, but not stellar. He later says his computer settings were out of whack, causing me to dislike it. The other friend is Mark, and he's not really an audiophile either. I taught him a few things though.

The next section is very image heavy. After the images comes a more broad section about my opinions regarding audio.

Little picture of stuff for sale in the meet from various Headfi members. They were giving out free stands?!

This is the Audeze table. It's hosted by a very cool DJ/audiophile that's related to the founders of Audeze in some way. On the table were LCD 2, 3, X, and XC. I prefer open headphones myself, so I was trying to hear the differences between each. These are the high end bass machines! A very different headphone from my HD800s. Mark and I both really enjoyed these. Favorite headphones on the show! My biggest issue with the LCDs is that the leather doesn't really breathe. Long sessions of gaming in a warm room sounds bad. They are also a bit on the heavier side. Not ridiculous but not the best. I think the LCDX is the best looking headphone that exists, aesthetics-wise.
I'm not necessarily a bass-head in that in all my tracks, I'm looking for bass. I am not looking for any bass on a piano track, for example. But there are times when I'm looking for that bass slam that's not boomy. Controlled, smooth bass with punch. When the bass hit in the guy's tracks, Mark and I looked at each other because we both knew this will get interesting.

I take picture of you taking a picture of them! The guy is very passionate about not just audio gear - but music. It's something you don't see that often in Headfi-circles, believe it or not. Some lay the charge that audiophiles spend more time listening to their gear than listening to music. Then again, we can draw a similar parallel for overclockers spending more time tweaking overclocks and running Prime95 than fragging people at Battlefield 4. But this guy, he's a DJ, he mixes his own music. Interesting display of songs, unlike the normal stereotypical audiophile type of tracks. These tracks play to the LCD's strengths I think... I can actually hear the bass with these tracks as opposed to Hifiguy528's table. Cool, weed-smoking, chill dude, rocking out to music! My only gripe is that he likes his music LOUD, as a DJ. You could turn the headphones into head-speakers at that point. Yes, they are open so they sound quieter than a normal person would assume from outside. But the volume was loud enough to cause issues to my ear, but not quite loud enough for me to quickly turn down the volume. (Turning down the volume affects his volume as well.) I wish I kept better track of which songs I enjoyed in the meet. The guy had a nice setup that allowed for many headphones to play at once. I'd like that one day. Nice for ABX tests, nice for minimal-hassle headphone switching.

Just a random picture of peoplez. There are a total of... I think 4 women in the entire place. Why are my hobbies so predominately male? (Besides like clothing etc) What exactly do females DO?

Entrance. $20 to get in. They had me marked down as "Dark_wizzie" cuz i'm teh wizzle.

This is Hifiguy528's table. He's a Youtuber. That's me trying out the Audeze LCD3. But the guy has very light songs, so I wasn't very impressed with them at this table. Mark is there trying out the HD700s. Why does everybody there have Macs or iPads? It's kindda creepy.

Hifiguy528's Wooaudio amps, although not my cup of tea, certainly LOOKS cool.

I was very excited to try out the STAX. As you might be able to tell, Mark there has donned the STAX 009, the most expensive headphone I know of - $4000! It is an electrostatic headphone, so its technology is different and requires a different amp. I really enjoyed the STAX 009. I think it does the sound better than my HD800s - but I think the soundstage is shrunk down. I'd still probably try my HD800s for gaming. But the electrostatics are LIGHTWEIGHT! It is way lighter than it looks.

PHOTOBOMB! I made a solemn pact long ago in the Andes Mountains to never smile in a photograph, EVER.

Apart from the Audeze LCDs and the Alpha Dogs, I also enjoyed the Hifiman HE-6, even though they are a real dog to try to amp properly and is one of the few headphones that will make my O2 amp struggle. Mark enjoyed the AKG Q701s, but frankly I didn't like it. For some reason they sounded too harsh on the highs. Mark thought they were very comfortable, but my HD800s are comfortable enough as is. When I'm on the Battlefield, the maps are wide open. So my headphones better sound WIDE OPEN. Can't beat the HD800s for that.

Mr. Speaker's table! He's a cool guy! My second favorite table behind the Audeze table! Mark and I both enjoyed the LCDs more than these but the price gap is huge. We also both enjoyed these headphones even though they were closed. We both preferred the Alpha Dogs over the Mad Dog. The Alpha Dog is the first headphone to be 3D printed! Mr. Speakers (love his name BTW) has a nice selection of tracks too. Nice down to earth guy. When we keep swapping between the two headphones, the wires started becoming more and more tangled. We had to manually detangle them!

Little on-the-move shot of us walking from Headfi room to room in the hotel.

Look at me, I am soo0o0oOOOo0o0oo Audi-O-File! I'm standing behind a water dispensing contraption that contains only melted ice! I'm drinking water from a glass cup! Come at me bro! SNOB SNOB SNOBBERY SNOB SNOB!!!111 

Why am I smiling while pouring water? Anyways, I like this water dispensing contraption! Really cool!

Come to SF, they said. It'll be cold, they said. Then it hit me that it's summer time and I'm in a hotel, not outside being hit by wind from the Bay. 

So to break it down, my favorite headphones from the meet (HD800s not counted): LCDx or LCD3, HE-6, and Alpha Dog. I wasn't expecting much from the HE-6... Reviews didn't seem to be that great and it's a pain in the ass to amp. But I enjoyed it. And the Alpha Dog, which are closed, meaning sound doesn't easily come out. I think open-backed headphones are typically nicer, allows for a more spacious, natural sound, but the Alpha Dogs were quite nice.Ultimate Ears had a table but the guy there said he was a replacement guy. He seemed like the most disorganized person in the room. He had a few earphones placed on a table with no device to try them out with on the table. My two favorite tables are the Audeze booth and the Mr. Speakers booth. Both had a fun dude at the helm and good tracks. I was pleasantly surprised at a wireless headphone table I went to. I forgot the name, but you could charge it via usb cable or use batteries. And the sound plus the wireless capabilities for a price of $175? I'd recommend it! Overall, it has been a fun day. I didn't get to try everything though, because I was time limited to 3 hours before my ride leaves without me.

So about audio in general... I think all things equal, a solid state amp should sound the same as another one. A solid state amp is just a normal amp. Amps amplify the sound, for things like headphones. I feel as far as accuracy goes, the O2 amp is as good as it gets. Well, technically you might be able to find better, but at ridiculous prices and with very minimal gains which shouldn't be audible. NWavguy, the guy who designed the O2 and the Odac, is somebody I respect for his approach to things. He did things by measurements and science and testing, not by hunches or feelings or by ear. Our ears are very fallible - NWavguy has a whole page on it. Of course, we run into problems like... how do we blind test headphones? Even if we could do it normally, from where will the gear come from? And done in a nice, quiet room with no time limit? Anyways. There are tube amps, which are esoteric, etc etc. But for now I'll stick to the O2. Seems fine to me. And I've tried many tube setups at the meet, too.

It's obvious that different headphones sound different. That part isn't argued by anybody. The question is whether you like one over another based on sound characteristics alone - which is a test that can be done. The real placebo, I think, is first and foremost in the cable section, where people spend tons of money on cables. And then the amps which cost thousands of dollars. Why would you make a tube amp, which is to color the sound to your liking, as neutral as possible? If you want that, go grab an O2.

I'm fine with somebody saying, I know my purchase is made on an emotional level - owning such and such makes me feel good, it looks good, I want cool toys, blah blah blah. But once you say, I like these because these sound better, you've made a claim which can be tested. And so I'll quickly go over my opinions on other aspects of audio: 16 bit is all you need, 24 bit is useless. 44khz sample rate is just fine. FLAC is very hard to distinguish from MP3 when both are done properly. Onboard audio on a motherboard is fine for the large majority of users if their motherboard is relatively decent. Blind testing is the golden standard to rule out expectation bias, placebo, mind-fuckery, etc. When buying new headphones, the best thing you can do is to try them out for yourself.

And once again, about the accusation that audiophiles spend more time listening to their gear than their music, this is probably true. But also as I mentioned, there are people who spent more time overclocking their CPU than playing games on it. I guess whatever people wanna do is whatever they wanna do. Of course, I'd still advise many audiophiles to spend a little more time enjoying their music. And carrying over what I mentioned from the "What we can learn from headphonse" blog post, basically, a headphone hobby might sound insane price-wise, if you look at how much a Lambo or a nice house costs, these headphones are chump change in comparison. It's all relative. Do you know that people spend tons of money collecting old coins and stamps or paintings?

And so now about Head-fi: Head-fi has been known to censor people. It's funded by a lot of audio companies, and there's an interest to protect them on the forums. For example, you are not allowed to mention double blind tests in the cable forum. Double blind testing is instead posted in a 'sound science' section of the forum, which gets very few posts. In essence, people are getting half the story here when they ask for advice. NWavguy was banned there and many others. On the other hand, Headfi makes up for it by the numbers. They have so many members. They can start Headfi meets. Others cannot. They get dibs on new gear and have more reviews. I think Headfi is a fine resource if you take the stuff on there with a grain of salt. Hydrogenaudio is great and all, but they focus on science instead of comparing gear to gear and half of the things said on the forum is not intelligible to the average user.

Brain Droppings II

Second Brain Droppings, where I list random thoughts I've had in the past few months. This one is going to be a bit lengthy as some of these were mini-blog posts that were not long enough to warrant its own post.

I think if we're going to be in some sort of relationship together, we have to make a commitment to be honest. I don't believe in white lies. If you are not 100% honest, then what percentage of honesty am I getting? 90%? 80%? 70%? Are you being honest about the answer? Do I have to throw everything you say through a filter? And yes, we might have different moral codes about lying to strangers, but we don't lie to our friends. But what if our strangers turn into our friends? We can dodge a lot of possible future problems simply by telling the truth. If you're making up lies about why you can't hang out tomorrow, has it dawned on you that you associate with people you don't care to talk to? If A gets off the phone with B because B says her son is sick and then A finds out from C that B is going to hang out with C instead of taking care of sick people, what A experiences is a permanent erosion of trust. And A may not even be close enough to B to ask B why she is lying to him, and B never finds out that her lie has been discovered, and we go through life like this. It's toxic. I think honesty is key in relationships. I don’t understand how ‘lack of communication’ happens and how relationships suffer due to it. You just communicate what you need to communicate. I’ll take honest, blunt truth over your vague, useless crap any day. You can be blunt but not an asshole, a line exists between the two. I don’t like you, I’m flattered, but we can still be friends. I’ve turned down people this way. Direct, unmistakable, and friendly. Somebody worked up the courage to ask you out, respect them by giving them a straight answer that won’t leave the person with wishful thinking.

This is what I love about the religious. They'll fight tooth and nail to ban abortion, but once all those kids are born and are living in unstable homes, living in poverty and really need society's help, the religious are nowhere to be seen.

Some jimmies were rustled when a news article suggested that League of Legends be an official Olympic sport. What is a sport? Is fishing a sport? Is golfing a sport? Whatever. I'm not getting into a semantics war with people. Everybody loves to game and that is precisely what makes competitive gaming very competitive. So many people do it. In order to be the top, you have to best so many people. The reaction times are superhuman. And teamwork. And strategy. It's hard to do. If you think it's easy money, go ahead, give it your best shot. You'll fail. If you think it's easy but there isn't a lot of money in it, you are deluded but what exactly are you mad about? That some people like to watch gaming competitions instead of people kicking a ball on a field? Did you know that people pay people to run around quickly? Yeah, they call it track and field. Do you know we have CARS? In light of this kind of stuff, don't try to pin anything on competitive gaming.

Wow I'm amazed at all of the comments bashing Americans... What's with all of the stereotyping? It's very annoying and inaccurate when you take a country with millions of people and hold a prejudice that you think defines each of us. And you all think we're the ignorant ones... The irony...

Vegetarianism. I don't think eating animals is immoral, I think killing it is. But all animals die anyway! Letting an animal chill in nature is not the same as packing a million chickens in a pen, raising them to be so fat they cannot stand, lying on top of feces, waiting to be slaughtered, ok? I mean, what if I applied that logic to you? You will die either way. What harm is there for others to kill you right now? The problem is, we're trying to weigh two things: The importance of the life of the animal versus the desire of the human to consume meat this instant. That's the issue here. I don't claim to have all the answers, I just think about things. Maybe a compromise is to kill animals only when they are about to die anyways and eat them, but this drives up meat prices. Maybe in the future, people will look at us similar to the way we look at people who practiced slavery.  Surely SOMEBODY knew that slavery was maybe just a tiny bit wrong when they whipped that slave for the 50th time? No?

So I go to EpicMealTime and I see all these 'meanwhile in Africa' comments on Youtube, and I just want to slap these people around. First of all, this comment contributes nothing in terms of new content. It also fails as a reminder of morality. You don't get to say 'meanwhile in Africa' if you yourself do not bother to dedicate your life to helping dying kids. We both don't give a rat's ass about the thousands of people that die all the time. Saying 'meanwhile in Africa' doesn't go towards making you a better person. Asking other people to donate doesn't really make you more moral, donating yourself is what makes you more moral. There are many things humans do that jeopardizes the well-being of other humans much more than eating too many Big Macs.

Some people need to get it in their noggins that not everybody craves social contact as much as they do... Being lonely isn't about how many people you are in contact with, it's a mental state. You can be in a crowd but feel so alone inside, or you can be alone but find life rewarding. Your ideals mean nothing to me. So when people say I have no life, I say, thank you. I kindda like life the way it is and I wear the no-life status as a badge of honor, as evidence of an independent spirit.

"Family values" is a phrase like "support the troops". What the hell it actually means when used in a sentence half the time, I have no idea. But it sure sounds good!

If you're the audio engineer for a musician, your job is to make sure the track is in pristine quality when it comes out. So why the fuck do I hear clipping in so many tracks, many of them from big budget artists? Why are you even getting paid?

If my internet is advertised as "up to 10 megabits per second", does that mean I only need to pay "up to" $35 a month?

Why are people so obsessed with being the first to comment on a new video? You were the first poster in one Youtube video out of millions. Great. The world will forever remember you because you were first. Really? It's just spam. Then I scroll down and there are piles of people claiming to be first.

New rule: The next time you say "studies show that..." in a debate, you're contractually obligated to list WHICH study and link it for reference.

Pre World War I, it was odd for women to wear pants. I feel women should not be allowed to wear pants because it's unnatural. Men wear pants, not women. And because of this, I get to make fun of women wearing pants. Let's all go back to Pre-WWI society. Let's put women back where they belong: In dresses only. If a woman wears pants, she's probably a lesbian because only gay people would deviate from what other women are supposed to wear. Attire is stagnant and everlasting. Being weird makes you a creepy person and nobody wants that!

A: Can I ask you a question?
B: You just did.
A: Well I mean, can I ask you a personal question?
B: You can. I believe in free speech.
A: I mean, will you be offended if I do?
B: How would I know, until you actually ask?
A: GODDAMIT ERIC%#*(#%^&(#*&^#()
B: That's not a question.

NSA: The only part of the government that actually listens.

Valentine's Day? What's that? Never heard of it.

'Swag is for boys. Class is for men.'

Superbowl?
Sounds like a marijuana reference.

"If you watch the footage, all the other victims are on the news thanking Jesus for only killing their neighbors and not them, while a crawler is on the screen telling me where I can text money to help them out." -Doug Stanhope, On the Oklahoma Tornado

"The key to happiness is low expectations." -Barry Schwartz

'You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language where a house can burn up as it burns down and in which you fill in a form by filling it out. Why is it called after dark when it is really after light? Things that we claim are underwater and underground are surrounded by, not under the water and ground." -Richard Lederer

Girls like cute puppies. To make girls like you, be a cute puppy.

Sexual orientation is like coffee preference. Why other people care about my coffee preference is beyond me.

Dean Leyeson, a Youtuber that I respect, once made a profound insight on love at first sight. There is no love at first sight. When you first meet a girl, you know nothing about the girl. What if she just killed four people and ate a baby before you met her? Would that change the way you look at her? What happens here is we look at a girl we like and we pretend the girl has all these traits we love. We create a person that never existed. So in reality, love at first sight is love at first fantasy.

I have fallen into love at first fantasy, where I assume what the girl is like before I knew her, and anything that doesn't mesh with it is instantly brushed aside, which is very ironic because that’s direct evidence that the girl I think she is, isn’t, and it’s the origin of my fancy for her (along with her dashing looks, of course). And as time passed I bent over backwards to talk to her at odd hours of the day, worshipping the ground she walked on. What I realized in the end was that while she was indeed a very attractive young woman, she’s not that special. I made her special in my mind. I focused on her and blocked out and had this amnesia about the billions of other girls that exist on the face of the earth. When you have idols, you put yourself under them. Never give other people that kind of power over you. Always maintain your self-respect.

...I need to post my stance on moral relativism on here, pronto. It's listed in my book though. Which reminds me, I'm still working on my book sporadically.

What we can learn from Headphones

Hey hey hey!
Long time no see, whoever you are! Unless this is your first time here, in which case... I've never seen you before. But still. Hey!

Today I want to talk about headphones and ABX tests and luxury.

HEADPHONES:
The other day I grabbed a Sennheiser HD800s. I'm not going to list the entire story here, because that's irrelevant and this isn't a diary. Sennheiser is a German company that makes microphones and headphones. It just so happens that the HD800s are the highest end Sennheiser headphones, which came out after (what people say is) 5 years of research and development. It replaces the HD650 as the top level headphone for Sennheiser. Oh yeah, and it costs a pretty penny too; The HD800 costs $1500 full retail, ~$1200 used if you are patient. Or less if you're really the bargain hunter. The HD650s are ~$350 used.

HOLY SHIT DID YOU JUST SAY YOU SPENT THAT MUCH MONEY ON FUCKING HEADPHONES?!

Welcome to post-purchase rationalization! Lol.

Let's look at it this way. The HD800s are top level headphones. The top tier single GPU solution from Nvidia is currently the GTX 780ti which costs what, $750? $800? The top tier single card GPU solution is the admittingly actually overpriced GTX Titan Z which retails for $3000. But it's like $500 overpriced. The soon-to-be octocore Haswell-E CPU is going to be $1000 at least for sure.

How much is a Lambo? $500k? How much is a luxurious house compared to a cheaper house? How much does it take to install a kitchen counter? How much is a top end piano? I guarantee you over $1000. A headphone does not become obsolete within 5 years like a graphics card or CPU. It does not get into traffic accidents and require a shitload of money to repair. No sir, it just pipes music into your ears. Or what about the instruments used to record a song played on my headphones? More than $1000, I guarantee you.

Why do companies get away with such expensive prices? Because the consumers are not perfectly rational. We buy things based on emotion contrary to what we want to believe. We don't all have good information, we don't all bother to seek out good information, and we can't tell good information apart from misleading information that sounds good. We don't have the budget to test everything personally and even when we do, we fall prey to our own expectation biases. But moreover, business 101. My accounting teacher coincidentally mentioned this point and drove it home a week ago. You NEVER sell things based upon the price it takes to make a product. You sell a product based upon perceived value of the product. You want to strike a balance between price and volume. And having a high price and low volume might produce intangible benefits like prestige. You see this all the time with expensive amps and dacs in the audiophile world. It's more expensive, therefore it's better! Isn't this greedy? Let's fact it: Our world relies upon companies. The greed of men forces men to produce things the best they can to earn more money and hopefully in the process, better mankind. It's when sales tactics are deceptive or flat out lies that the line is crossed. When people make the statement that so and so company is GREEDY, well NO FUCKIN' SHIT SHERLOCK, why do you think the company was founded in the first place, to make you happy? The issue is, when does a company become so greedy they lie and cheat and steal to get money?



Ok, but some people want to attack expensive headphones, citing a placebo effect. I think this is horseshit. You can easily hear a difference from one headphone to the next. You don't need to be a golden-eared audiophile to hear a difference. It's whether you think the difference is an improvement and whether it's worth the money. Whether something is worth the money is subjective. There are people who pay tons for vintage cars, or old stamps and coins. How much research and development went into producing an old stamp? Not that much.

But speaking of golden-eared audiophiles and placebo effect... These two do have some relation. There are these 'audiophiles', right? Well now, this is where semantics is a bitch - Nobody really knows what 'audiophile' means, it's like defining god. Most people have a similar idea but a vague-ish idea that varies from person to person. Is an audiophile a person that loves high fidelity music? Or one who spends tons on audio? Or one who can appreciate high end gear vs low end? There is a negative depiction of an audiophile, listening to their equipment rather than their music. In other words, some people are so obsessed with their audio hardware to the point where they don't enjoy the music. And it plays out in some ways to many wannabes, who think they have 'golden-ears', hearing things most humans cannot. Here are some examples:

-MP3 vs FLAC
MP3 is a music format that compresses music lossly, meaning data is lost to decrease disk space usage. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, which is compression that does not lose data when compressing and in theory produces better audio at the cost of more space usage. The problem here is, a properly done, modern MP3 rip is almost identical to a FLAC track for human ears. Now there ARE people who undergo training to hear nuances in lossy vs lossless tracks but normal people cannot hear them for the most part even when played side by side. So when a ton of people claim 'OMG FLAC MAKES NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENCE', they're talking out of their ass. Placebo is very nasty.

-Higher end DACs and Amps
The DAC is a digital to analog converter, it makes music possible. Turns 1s and 0s into actual music. The amp is a seperate item that amplifies the signal from the DAC for headphones. There are amps for speakers but that is irrelevant and too much of a tangent to talk about. The thing here is, modern day technology has caught up fast; a $10 DAC has the ability to be transparent. That means it does not color the sound. Coloring the sound means causing the track to play out distortions, which may be anything from hissing to having too much or too little bass, midrange, or treble. And people have this feeling that "Well, I spent $1k+ on headphones, it seems ridiculous to spend so little on a dac and amp".

This has some merit but usually does not. DACs are susceptible to interference and other issues if the implementation is flawed. For example, a DAC placed inside a computer is affected by electronic interference. This is true and a poor implementation on the motherboard may cause your computer audio to have audible hisses and distortions. Fair enough. In the past, free DACs included on the motherboard were trash but they have gotten way better to the point where the distortions are no longer audible.

The same thing for amps as with DACs. If they perform their job properly, THEY SHOULD ALL SOUND THE SAME. It is not the job of the DAC or amp to change the sound. They should be reproducing sound exactly as the artist made it.

-High End Cables
Sorry bro. High end cables are sealed to prevent the snake oil from leaking out.

-24 bit vs 16 bit, 44khz vs 44khz+ sample rates
Long story short: A standard 16 bit, 44khz track is perfect.

-CD vs Vinyl
Vinyl has made a comeback the last several years. Long story short: Vinyl does NOT sound better than CDs and are likely to sound WORSE, but if done right, the degradation is not really audible. But vinyl is EXPENSIVE.

SO WHAT IS YOUR POINT ERIC TELL ME ALREADY
Sorry, I went a bit too much into detail.
Let me just say this: ABX testing. It is the fucking holy grail of objective, scientific experimentation to figure out if all these things make audio better. A blind test. Double blind. Where the subject has to detect whether two sources sound the same or different. Person hears, switches back and forth, determines answer, moves on to the next pair. Of course, we need to cover up the source or expectation bias may set in.

NWavguy has an EXCELLENT albeit long-winded post about expectation bias:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-we-hear.html

If you cannot demonstrate that you hear, how the hell are you supposed to prove there is a difference and that the difference is preferable? And here is where some audiophiles go into kookoo territory and it becomes its own religion/superstition. This is where people buy thousand dollar cables and dacs and amps but forget to properly treat their room for sound wave reflections off of a small room with large speakers. People want to believe their rituals and money spent are not wasted.

What about HD800s?
I fully concede that HD800s are a small upgrade from HD600s. Every single high end headphone gets glowing reviews because the people reviewing them are fucking MORONS. It's the same thing with CPU reviews on Newegg, no worries. People typically have no idea what they are talking about and the ones that do get ignored or are too busy trying to praise their own purchase to care.

I'm sick and tired of this anti-scientific anti-abx bullshit from subjectivists. If there is a difference, you should be able to pick it apart.


Expectation bias, expectation bias. We all have it, nobody is immune, it's human psychology. There is a reason why drug tests work the way they do. And when people get angry and want to defend their position they commit the same fallacies as religious people defending their religion. A billion reasons why they are right but zero proof can ever be given.

Anyways.
One last thing, about Beats and their headphones.

The old Beats, they suck. They suck horribly, ok? I heard the new flagships are decent. Decent but not the best for their price range. Little kids want to get them for their status and looks and coolness. Beats has a rock solid marketing campaign. Some argue that beats contribute to audio, in that it makes kids care about audio quality. Some say Beats do more harm than good because they don't actually deliver top end audio. But you know, if at the end of the day you want to get Beats because it looks cool and you want a $300 fashion accessory that costed $30 or less to make (literally), so be it. Your money. Just don't try to argue that it has the best audio.

And along with Beats and mainstream is the Loudness War.
See this is where regular non-audiophile crap gets in the way of good audio. Loud music makes us instinctively feel the song is better and the audio quality is better. This is well known. So in order to make a song loud, artists crank shit up. The problem with THAT is, a track has a maximum and minimum range. If everything is loud, it can and almost always will go past the limit. This can cause distortions like clipping, very audible in Imagine Dragon's "Radioactive". The sad part is, when the Loudness War came about, there is no counter because the music was recorded or mastered poorly. FLAC vs MP3 doesn't help. And the real sad part is, the volume should be adjusted by the LISTENER, not the artist. When you do it in reverse, and you get a compressed track that sounds bad. And even if I turn down the volume, the data where the distortion now occurs is lost forever. And these audio engineers, which get so much money, I have no idea why they have a job. They are supposed to be the nuts that listen to every last detail and obsess over these things and the put out this junk. They have no fucking self respect for their work and the industry.

When there is no quiet, there is no loud. Nowhere is this more evident in mastering.

Lie to Me

Some people feel that lying to a kid about Santa Clause is a good decision. I disagree. Lies are lies. If your parents go through so much trouble and make up such a long-winded explanation of how presents end up in the house, how can I trust what my parents say about other subjects? Oh, so the parent lies just about Santa and nothing else? They say trust is like paper; once it is crumpled, it can never be made perfect again. Do the parents decide to stop lying when things are important? Right, because that's so easy to tell.

I feel that lying is immoral. I'm the type of person that would take the truth above any sort of lie. I would take the truth even when the truth and the lie both results in the same outcome, only the truth hurts more. I prefer truth over lies. This is the reason why claims about religion annoy me so much in principle. I want to believe in something because it's true, not because it's comforting. Half truths and lying by omission are deceptive and in my eyes almost equivalent to a flat out lie. Why is it so fucking difficult to get the truth? We're so used to lying to everybody to the point where we are expected to lie or deceive people when their emotions are in danger. If I asked a girl out and she's not into me, I don't want some bullshit like "I'm not looking for a boyfriend" or something. Just say it. It's like a band-aid. Rip it off, prevent scarring. Get it over with. I deserve the truth and if you don't give it, it is on you. I don't care if it's hard to tell the truth. Just refuse to tell the answer if you're so embarrassed or uncomfortable.Prevent anybody from getting the wrong idea and keeping false hope that will get shattered in the end all the same. I don't want false hope, I want the real deal. I want to prepare emotionally and physically for whatever comes my way before I hits me in the face. And it's funny to me that relationships go under due to 'lack of communication'. Or the ridiculous bullshit mind-games that people play in relationships. Be real. Tell the truth. Know what your standing is with everybody else and vice versa.

Now, back to Santa Clause. Some may argue that lying to children about Santa Clause gives them a sense of wonder. This is bafflement. This is confusion about how the laws of physics works and testing the incredulity of little kids by feeding them lies. Sure, with religion the idea has a higher chance of actually sticking with them into adulthood, but at least from a religious person's point of view, they are teaching their kid the truth. Teaching kids about Santa Clause is flat out intentional lying. There are many things in this world that are amazing and filled with wonder. Teach a kid what a cloud is. Or what a rainbow is. Or what the Sun is. Or how when we look out into the night sky, we are looking back in time. There is so much magic in reality that we don't need to start inventing myths and superstitions about this fat dude flying around in the air assigning toys to kids he deems nice instead of naughty after around the clock surveillance. And science has practical applications too. Beyond just wonder, IT'S REAL. The world revolves around science. This is education along with wonder.

Have you see Vsauce? It is a Youtube channel for mainstream science, where very interesting questions are posed. How much does a shadow weigh? Did you know the same effect that makes the sky blue is also what makes our eyes blue? Etc etc. And it is the strongest science Youtube channel to date. It fills people with curiosity, with wonder. And it is also educational. We don't need a fake fat guy in the way to get there. Or we can turn Santa into an educational activity. Kid asks if Santa is real? Ask him or her to investigate. How would we go about figuring this out?

I'm not a parent. I don't have  PHD in child raising. But when in doubt, stick with the truth. I don't think messing with the kid's sense of reality. You may argue that kids taught about Santa typically do just as well as the ones not taught about Santa Clause, but similar things can be said for teaching people about astrology. It's one more piece of falsehood and pseudoscience that just might stick. You cannot encourage healthy skepticism on one hand and then teach them about Santa being real on the other. And kids are still learning things about the world, and incorporating what they learn into their grasp of reality. Don't chuck lies in there.

Wonder is wonder. Wonder doesn't have to mean lies.

Opportunity Cost

Here's a thought: The food you eat, the shoes you buy? They are killing people.

Every $100 you spent on something is a $100 that could have been spent elsewhere. When you spend $100 on shoes, you are saying that the value of the shoes outweigh everything else I could get for $100 at this moment. Let's just say for the sake of argument that donating $100 to the right places saves the life of one random person. So the logical conclusion is, buying shoes for $100 means the person thinks the shows are more valuable than the life of a random person. And not only that, the $100 could've been used to save the person, therefore the person allowed somebody to die.

The obvious problem slams people in the face rather quickly: Then doesn't this mean we are indirectly allowing thousands of people to die? Well, yes. We are. There's really no argument that can be made at this point against my conclusions. Opportunity cost is understood in-depth in economics. But the coming points are subjected to debate, and debate people will. Since we are letting thousands die, does this make us immoral? The question lies on how we call somebody moral.

First of all, the most basic argument that leads all the way back to the very basic philosophical ideas on morality is that of moral relativism. But this is largely a useless argument. Unless you want to tell me that the people dying want to die, that you personally feel people should die, or that I think people should die, then we are all in agreement that death is bad and should be avoided. Moral relativism, while an interesting philosophical idea, is purely academic in that it does not translate to how we do policies.

But then the question comes in: How do we judge a person to be good or bad? When we call somebody a bad or a good person, we are not typically talking about one specific act they do, but rather every action and thought the person undertakes. Here is my opinion. Your good has to outweigh the bad for you to be a good person. Killing 50 kids and then opening the door for an elderly woman makes you a bad person in total. This case would be the case of a bad person doing one good thing.

I've had arguments which I did not expect. One person considered my stance to b e contradictory because a person doing good things can be good, but a person doing good things can be bad. Well, yes. That's not contradictory. Once again, whether we call a guy good or bad depends on the totality of their thoughts and actions.a

Another argument is about how my conclusions mean we cannot ever be moral. Seeing that every $100 we spend is letting people die, then we can never be moral. That's not actually an argument on the merits and logical consistency of my thought process. If it is true that it is impossible to be moral, then so be it. That's sucks, that's inconvenient, but that doesn't make my conclusions logically fallacious.

One idea is that we judge a person to be good or bad based upon the standards of our time period. Owning slaves is OK 200 years ago, but do that in 2013 and you are considered a monster. Therefore the thought process goes, because most people in 2013 constantly spend money for their own good instead of saving other human beings, doing so is the norm, therefore by this criteria, this does not make us immoral.

Which is something I do agree with, but may be problematic for the future. When slavery was practiced 200 years ago, some people questioned whether this practice is actually good. Maybe we should think about the suffering of others. It takes people who are forward thinkers, who come up with answers about morality which most people don't care for, to drive society forward. If every single person 200 years ago had the mindset that, because slavery is normal, practicing slavery is normal by the standards of their time, therefore there is no need to change, then we will NEVER STOP SLAVERY.

So sometimes I think about the future. Have you ever thought about the past? Asked yourself, how the hell so many people practiced slavery without second thoughts. How their conscience didn't eat them inside-out. Why did it take so freakin' long for somebody in the government to realize slavery is wrong? Didn't ANYBODY stop and think about the suffering of their fellow man? What was wrong with them? It seems to patently obvious that slavery is immoral. What about the future? Maybe people will come and look at 2013, shaking their heads. Didn't people in 2013 KNOW that the $80000 they earn a year and proceed to spend on themselves is letting countless people die in a variety of horrible ways? What were they THINKING? Surely SOMEBODY stopped and think, maybe what we're doing is not morally correct?

The Starving Child

If you were walking on a street one day and saw a starving, dying child, you would probably feel the need to do something about it. Buy the person something to eat, call the cops, or something. But if the person is dying somewhere else, and we know this happens, we feel utterly no moral imperative at all. So the suffering has to be in our face for us to care. Would you save somebody in your school or work for a few dollars? You probably would. But for some stranger? You still might. But you would keep saving people until you realize you don't have money left to buy yourself a new Xbox, then you'd stop. No such point exists where you give out so much money, it is morally correct to stop giving out money to save some people from death. It just becomes more inconvenient to you, but is your convenience worth their death? Every single thing you buy, you are accepting the opportunity cost of that purchase. Every $100 you spent could've been spent to prevent that starving kid from dying. It's not your problem? Of course not. I can do all sorts of very illegal things to you this instant, and if it were not for the law, it wouldn't really be my problem now, would it? Would you say, "not my problem" if you see a guy having a heart attack and you were the only witness? Out of sight, out of mind. No name, no face, no sleep lost.

There's this diffusion of responsibility. If many people can fix the issue, you feel less liable. When I was in psychology class, the teacher showed a video clip about a few psychological studies regarding the diffusion of responsibility. The people in the study saw (or in some cases heard) what seems to be somebody having a heart attack. You have one person in the room seeing this, and they run out for help. You have three people, and the three just sit there going 'oh my god'. This is why when people have a heart attack, medical training says to assign one specific person to call 911 instead of just yelling 'SOMEBODY CALL A MEDIC'.

How many people are in poverty today? In true poverty, not unemployment in the United States. Your bad day is their great day. You are too lazy to go to the store to get food to eat. Or, you're trying to eat less because you're getting fat. The guys over there don't have food to eat. Not my problem, I got dance classes, cya.

Not just you, of course. Everybody. Me as well. We're not programmed by evolution to be selfless. But I'm saying we are indirectly killing people all the time and we feel no remorse. I believe nobody can meet the standards of morality this sets. But if you're not going to donate money, the least you can do is the acknowledge the reality and not blatantly say 'it's not my problem'.

Public Service Announcement

This is a public service announcement:

Gay does not mean "any sort of sexual deviance" or "not fitting into gender norms".

Fag is a slur referring to a homosexual. It does not mean "bad" or "stupid" or "n00b at Battlefield 3". Calling others this means you can either tell other people's sexual orientation across the internet or you're just being a bigot who doesn't know how to insult somebody with any level of creativity.

Ignorance is not stupidity. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge. We are all ignorant of countless things. The issue comes when you are presented with the answer and the evidence and you cannot tell what is right from what is wrong. The road to knowledge starts by admitting you don't know something. If one is willing and able to learn, there is no need to dock somebody for being ignorant.

Newbie isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd take a newbie who is responsive to feedback compared to an arrogant asshole. Beating you in a game does not make the other person a newbie or a n00b necessarily and in fact often means the exact opposite.

Asking "Can I ask you a question?" is a complete waste of breath. Because you just asked one without permission. So what the hell are you getting at? Yes, you may. Anybody is 'allowed' to ask a question. It's called free speech. The problem is whether I am willing and able to answer or whether I will be offended by your question. Which I won't know until YOU ASK ME.

That is all.