Free Will Pt 2: Response to a Response

I made a comment 10 months ago on a Joe Rogan podcast with Sam Harris on Youtube. That podcast was about free will. I thought I could summarize what Sam was really saying in a very short format, and so I did. It's been quiet for a long time, but I got a new message from that comment thread yesterday. Nothing like that to drag me back into the fray. Let me restate my thoughts on free will here:

Anything and everything we can and will do is bound by the state of molecules in the universe before our birth. Physics does the rest. We are like a computer which reacts to inputs, doing different things depending on the state of the molecules inside the computer. What the computer will do can be predicted. If we break it down to quantum mechanics, we simply get more chaos and uncertainty, not more free will. 

We are the sum of our experiences and physiology which we get by chance. Free will is an illusion. When a brain tumor forces a man to kill his family, we understand the man is simply unlucky. Similarly, I see criminals as malfunctioning people who got the wrong environment, the wrong genetics, the wrong physical causalities that compels a person to commit the crime they did. They could not have done otherwise given those inputs. 

This doesn't mean that punishment is therefore useless. Nothing good is lost and something good is gained. We now have a basis for incredible amounts of empathy. Vengeance now makes no sense. Our goal now is to rehabilitate, not to punish for the sake of it.

The argument was that if there was no free will and humans are just products of their biology and environment then humans would be doomed to repeating the same actions over and over again. In other words, there will never be moral progress, for example.

To me the fact that humans are a product of the environment and biology (and biology ultimately being a product of physics) seems obvious. What other possible answer could there be? Even if you believe god breathes life into dust we come shooting out, we did not choose our soul. You're starting out from the premise that you are given a brain/soul/etc that you did not choose which will more or less determine everything you do or think to do.

To address the actual argument, I think humans are far too complex for us to end up repeating the same actions like a dumb computer. People are an amalgamation of a wide range of motivations, failings, and idiosyncrasies. The world is full of varied environments, and even identical twins living in the same household have different epigenetics. When we look even deeper, the twins do not have identical atomic structures, and neither is the environment exactly the same for both twins down onto the micro level. This is just a very pretentious way for me to say that there are always very small differences in everything (chaos theory).

So, everybody's atoms are different, their environments are different, and they affect other humans (such as passing on of history and past failings) to form this super complicated system that allows for so much diversity in human behavior and history. (But in some cases, it seems like history repeats itself.)

Thinking back about the computer analogy reminds me of chess engines. Strong chess engines are non-deterministic, in other words they do not always do the same move or analysis if you rewind the position again. The chess engine has no free will. It is just the interaction between lines of code and the cores of the processor. And over time differences emerge, and the position just deviates from there until we get something totally new. Imagine a chess game with idiosyncratic and error-prone humans whose actions and feelings change from day to day and hour by hour. Now imagine 7 billion people all playing this gigantic game of chess. Anything can happen.

A hypothetical posed by the commenter is as follows: If we know that murderers are simply malfunctioning people, since there is no free will it must be due to genetics or environment. Can we then start killing the person's offspring to stop future murderers?

Well, no. We can, but we shouldn't. We don't know if the cause of the murder was due to genetics or the environment or some vague mixture of the two which we cannot untangle. Obviously if the problem is environmental killing the baby is as dumb as killing yourself to prevent cancer. We also don't know that the murder gene will pass on and manifest in the same way to their offspring. Ideally we would rehabilitate criminals but the world is not ideal and we do not have the time, resources, or means to fix criminals. 'Rehabilitation' can very well involve punishment, it's just that punishment for the sake of vengeance makes little sense. It may very well be that a child will respond to a scolding or grounding after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar, for example. So when I mentioned 'rehabilitation' I don't always mean a life of free food and Xbox inside the same room all day. The question is what gives the best results, but who the hell knows?

There is also a social cost of killing off offspring even if we knew they would grow up to be problematic. There is always a cost when you break the social order. A great example is brought up by Sam Harris himself in another podcast. We know that donating a kidney or some bone marrow won't kill you but can very well save the life of somebody. Yet, doctors do not suddenly grab patients and forcibly cut their kidney out. Why? Because there is a cost to society when you live in such uncertainty. If you can just kill children that are in high risk areas then not only you do inevitably murder innocent babies that would have grown up to be innocent, you end up with a world where we trust the culling of humans based on some people's judgement. That is the world where babies are torn from their mother's hands due to the baby failing some sort of test. A simple, straight utilitarian viewpoint fails because the world is not simple.

Some Thoughts I've Been Having Lately

Gay Marriage, Bestiality, & Pedophilia Pt II

I was watching Louis Rossman's stream (he runs a board repair shop somewhere on the east coast), where he was dissecting the newest Macbook "pro". The discussion touched on gay rights for a bit. We have that classical baker problem, right? Should somebody be able to deny service to a gay person if it goes against their religious beliefs? Some people believe they should purely on a freedom perspective... people should have the right to deny service to anybody for any reason, just like how the customer gets to rant about it online and try to bankrupt the business. Louis replied by saying that he thought that's just not a good idea. Would denying service to somebody because they are gay make the world a better or a worse place, he asked. When it comes to gays, my favorite thing to say is my own made up line: Sex preference is like coffee preference. Why people care about by coffee preference is beyond me.

Then the conversation touched on bestiality and pedophilia. Obviously, the chatbox wasn't the perfect place to discuss these matters deeply. To me the answer is obvious. Bestiality is sex of another animal, and there is no consent. So it's a no go. Pedophilia is not molestation and molestation is not rape. Let's not get our terms twisted here.

I've talked about this in the past. I don't believe in free will. A person was unlucky enough to be born with the environment, brain chemistry, alignment of synapses, that causes a person to like what they like. Most people are into the opposite sex. Some are into the same sex. Some are into old people. Some are into children. Raping or molesting old people is not okay, and okay, we can make the argument that doing the same type of crime on a child is worse.

But the assumption here is that anybody that is into children molests children? Because that's just a stupid thing to say. Of course there are people into children that recognize rape and molestation are not okay, and many of them struggle with the guilt their entire lives. It's a paraphilia with no upsides.

By banning pedophilia you are banning thoughts and preferences and that doesn't sit right with me for more than one reason.

By banning molestation and rape of children (as if it wasn't already) we are saying no to these things when there is no consent (and, a strong case can be made that no consent could even be given in this particular case, which is in some ways similar to bestiality).

Finally, molestation and bestiality are not the same as gay sex. The slippery slope argument here is just ridiculous. First think about the gay sex issue on its own. Then when we have the time we can think about how society should deal with bestiality and 'pedophilia'. I can do the reverse-slope argument: Anything not strictly by the book sex leads a slippery slope into gay sex, then pedophilia, then bestiality, then the entire world goes to hell because Satan wins.

What a great argument, no?

My Next Computer Build (Named Undelwalt)

I still haven't decided whether I want to do a custom loop for my next build yet. If I'm going to do a custom loop, I'm going all out. I see little reason to get the inconveniences of a custom loop without reaping its main benefit: the best performance. But that would mean maybe a $1,000 project depending on how it is done. Water cooling is its own seperate world and there are many choices and places to go wrong. Specifically for me, the choice is between a mora (external thingy with a lot of radiators mounted) or a more expensive, some ways elegant, some ways less elegant, traditional radiator setup in my case. My case wasn't designed for serious water cooling, it was designed for serious air cooling (it's even in the name of the case). I don't even know what case to get for triple 480mm radiators, and how I'm going to feed it only the coolest air. A mora would help bypass those issues, but something about it doesn't sit right with me... It's more about quantity over quality, which admittedly is not really a problem when all that really matters in the end of measurable performance.

At any rate, I don't want to name my next computer Undelwalt if it features no custom loop. There is no HBM for Pascal, and no custom loop? Comon, sure, upgrade, but it is not worthy of that name.

Temperature

So... we don't really feel temperature, right. We feel the rate in which heat is transferred from one object to the other. That's why a metal plate feels colder than a plastic plate at room temperature. The metal conducts heat away from us faster. In room temperature they would be at the same temperature, which is room temperature. If we put an ice cube on both plates, the ice cube would melt faster on the metal plate despite feeling colder to the touch because it transfers heat to the ice cube faster than the plastic one.

Then I'm thinking about my hands. They feel so cold. Surely if it's as cold as my senses are telling me it is, I would have a frostbite. Given what I know, my cold hands must be pretty warm. But they don't feel that way. My brain is screaming 'SO YOUR HANDS MUST BE A GOOD THERMAL CONDUCTOR BRUH'.

How is it, that when I game my armpits are hot but my hands are freezing cold? RIP intelligent design.

Intelligence vs Kindness

Several years ago I valued reason, logic, intelligence, education a whole lot. To me it was almost the primary judge of a person's worth as a human being. Over time some of my views have mellowed out a bit. If everybody thought and acted the way I did, then the world would be kind of a shitty place. The world needs some people willing to help others and do charity work.

Books

To finish off my collection of Skyrim books, I will purchase the third volume of The Skyrim Library (and skipping the Skyrim Special Edition Guide Collector's Edition since my older guide is the same, just with a different cover and bookmark). It's $1.40 off the $25 price required to get free shipping from Amazon for books though. I think I will buy Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence... This is the book I've heard Elon Musk read when it comes to fears about AI. Sam Harris said he got the impetus to look into it from Elon, and I've heard CGP Grey read the book too.

Just by purchasing the book and telling the world about it I get the satisfaction of reading the book without ever opening it. ;)

Intelligence and Judging of Others

Look, different people have very different opinions about my intelligence and worth as a human being. Really. A good example was with the whole religion thing. There were people who sent me some pretty angry hate mail. On the other hand, there was a guy who was beyond impressed that I wrote a book about religion... Surely he didn't believe in a god, but if he did, it felt like it would be me.

But okay, I already digressed. I don't need to be super duper genius to judge somebody to be less intelligent or reasonable than I am. Sure, it is easy to see one subject in which one is unreasonable and be tempted to judge their entire character based on that. But some people you know well enough to pass a judgement on. We judge people all the time. If it's not consciously (wow you are a saint), then unconsciously. It's just that, on occasion I have the balls and the honesty to tell somebody what I really think about them when I feel it is important. Now, I'm not going to turn my blog into a place where I rail against people I've had disagreements with, don't worry. I won't even offer details here.

I'm just saying. To illustrate my point I will just use IQ, and just pretend IQ is the perfect measure of intelligence for the sake of argument. If a guy is 80 IQ and I am 100 IQ, I can see that the other guy is dumb. Both below average and below my intelligence. But I don't need to be 140 IQ to see that 80 IQ guy is not all that bright.

Does this mean I will treat the 80 IQ guy like garbage? Of course not. I just probably won't value his opinions on some matters as much as the other people I know. Or, if I find his opinions to be so stupid as to be toxic, I will just not bring up or refuse to discuss some type of topics.

When somebody calls me arrogant for saying I think I am smarter than they are, they are really saying that they are smarter than I think they are. That's really all there is to it. I'm sure we could find people we both agree are morons, and get no pushback for saying so and so is dumb. The reason one the former makes me arrogant and the latter doesn't is because the guy being told he's not smart or as smart as he think he is is insulted and doesn't feel the same way about himself.

Do I ask for agreement? No. Feel free to disagree. And if so and so Mr. 80 IQ thinks I'm the 80 IQ guy then great, I didn't want to talk about hard topics with him in the first place (albeit for the reverse reason, but hell, it all works out).

I'm being exceptionally blunt here because I feel like it right now. And after reading this some will probably still think I'm an arrogant asshole.

Again: We all judge people. Some just have the honesty to say what they think when the time comes. And while I am blunt here I will try to be more... euphemistic... nice... etc, to try not to get the other guy to be pissed off at me. The fact that I even have to tell somebody what I think about them when it comes to this, often is a negative indicator of their awareness level.

Other Stuff
Meh. Thanksgiving was a disaster, but I managed to get home without being stranded in the middle of nowhere, so that's good. I bought some jeans for like $15 from JCP because my pants were all disintegrating. I read a bit about spin wash cycles, permanent press, and other stuff...

Skyrim SE is still coming along. It seems clear that it is the future. I'm seeing others working on a project with a somewhat similar to mine (take pictures of every texture in the game to compare texture packs). Makes my project feel... not special, lol.

FF15 comes out this week. I hope my crush on Luna won't be destroyed by oddly inhuman dialogue that is in Kingsglaive. Cliched, cheesy, bad dialogue makes me cringe, so I hope to see some compelling stories.

I hope to finish the Skyrim texture project by Feburary 2017. First I want to finish my The Last Remnant hard mode playthrough. After Skyrim SE I will play some Fallout 4 DLC, Skyrim SE (SURPRISE YOU CAN ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME INSTEAD OF JUST MODDING IT!!!)... And my next task, returning to Mugen testing, this time running many shorter matches more akin to a chess rating list. That way I can tally how much A wins over B and have that affect elo rating.

What am I going to do with school? Hell if I know. Let's not think about that right now.

If I keep typing, everything is going to go downhill from here so let's stop.

Buh bye.

Early Thoughts on the Male Contraception Shot

Some early thoughts about the 'male birth control shot':

-It seems to me that all articles fail to describe notable details in the trial.

-There were 320 participants. Only 20 of them (6.25%) left the trial due to actual adverse effects of the drug. 8 of them withdrew for more than one reason.

-It is easier for me to see just how feminists and anti-feminists end up in this hellhole together. Reading again and again stuff like how men don't get it, men are babies, men are too fragile for office, medicine is inherently sexist, it makes it easy to make it feel like I'm the one being accused. In some cases these people clarify which men they are talking about, but for some I can't help wonder if they're talking about all men. On the other hand, I went to the Blue Pill subreddit and saw some ridiculous BS too, like 'men don't get pregnant, why should they have to worry about contraception, any side effect is too much'.

-In March an independent committee established by WHO/RHR and CONRAD determined that the risks reported outweighed the harms in the study. I wonder what that actually means. Can they just do another study later on? How easy would that process be?

-To my understanding, it is the job of the participants to report all side effects, even side effects that might not even have to do with the drug. Reporting acne is not the same as complaining about acne and crying about it to mommie. And it's unclear how severe their problems were.

-It's unclear to me what 'severe' acne or libido increase even means. Acne can vary from normal to disfiguring. Although, I have to wonder just how high libido one's libido has to be for it to be 'severe'.

-One person in the study committed suicide. Study finds this was probably not due to the drug.

-A 'nonfatal serious adverse effect' was depression for one person, rated as probably related. In the past I've had the displeasure of encountering a person who got super triggered at me for talking about suicide and depression in a slightly slack way, Telling this guy to 'suck it up' might be dangerous for his mental health. But to be fair, this is an isolated incidence even though it was rated as serious.

-In another one of these types of cases, a man got tachycardia with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, rated as possibly related.

-Finally, the last 'nonfatal serious adverse effect' was a guy who attempted suicide, rated as 'probably related'. Did you read this in the media? No, I don't think so.

-According to the study, a person has not recovered fertility after 4 years. 8 of the participants took over a year. This is a serious side effect that needs to be noted.

-75% of men responded positively to the survey and said they would give this method of contraception a shot. The person writing the results of the study thinks this supports further development of this contraception approach. I agree. Clearly most men like it.

-In the end I think the person who can avoid pregnancy the easiest ought to do the contraception, be it the male or the female. Of course, I'm not going to tell people how to have sex. A couple should discuss together what they want. Maybe they want to mix the shot with the pill.

-It is not beyond the drug companies' morals to try to leverage social justice/accusations of sexism to try to get a drug passed. Not to say that it is being done here. But it seems people oversimplify the science behind drugs. For example, calling Flianserin 'female viagra' and denying it from store shelves sounds like a possible case of sexism but close inspection of the data shows why it was not allowed.

-Were there possible serious side effects due to the drug? Yes. Were there probably babies? Yes, some of the men in the trial were probably wusses. But they were the minority. I wish I had more details to judge more accurately, but I do not. Then again, neither do the people ranting on FB.

-The figure quoted is a 4% chance of failure. It's unclear exactly what the 4% figure means. If each use there is a 4% chance of failure then the contraceptive method is terrible. More likely it's 4% failure rate when used over a typical year. Jury's out on what a 'typical year' means.

-My final question is this: What percentage of females left studies regarding the pill due to side effects? We know what this study showed that 5% of men left the study due to side effects without specific information on how bad the side effects where. What of females in a similar situation? Surely we need data from both sides to see if there's even a problem here. Without adequate data it seems people are reading headlines (or even articles, albeit terrible ones) and believing what they want to believe without no further investigation.

-My conclusion is that I don't know, and more data is needed. While it is true that some men do need to be reminded of the problems (and even the benefits) of the pill, I got that after the first post and scrolling more and more I only see that with some angry voices and very little specifics on the study. Remember, the angrier both sides get, the less both sides listen to each other. I have a cool head right now and it really is the best way to go when discussing these issues. Plus, it sucks to comment on studies without reading it first (although everyone is guilty of that, including me). If Healthcare Triage makes a video on this topic I will post an update later as necessary.

-The link to the summary of the study is here: http://press.endocrine.org/doi/pdf/10.1210/jc.2016-2141

Scientific Studies and Journalism

You've probably seen those headlines: Latest study shows eggs are good for you. Latest study shows eggs are bad for you. Cell phones might cause cancer. Scientists discover a way to make plastic out of pollution. These headlines are confusing because it seems like the scientific community can't make up its mind about anything, with contradictory information every other day. Many of the touted miracles and breakthroughs don't ever show up in the real world.

What this is is a symptom of terrible journalism... Journalism so bad, many of the writers of those types of articles should be fired. While the readers are stumbling around, confused and distrusting of science with all its seemingly abundant contradictions, the writers of those articles are busy trying to get clicks and eyeballs on their content. While it frustrates me that people who read these articles can't see past them or ask any basic and relevant questions, I don't really blame them. Science is complicated. If it weren't, we could all be scientists. People don't have the time to look at the specifics of every study, and even if they wanted to they often have to pay to have access to the studies. Not only do people need a background in the particular field that is being studied, they also need to understand how studies work in general. That's not even considering the dogmas people hold about many subjects and just plain irrationality. And boy, those things are in no short supply.

Let's explore the many ways words and sentences can trick you into believing things that are not true when it comes to medicine.

'The World Health Organization has categorized processed meats as a group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco.'

One has to ask, what exactly does 'group 1 carcinogen' even mean? It's normal to assume the worst. The WHO uses the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) system. There is a difference between 'hazard' and 'risk'. The former explains the likelihood that something can give cancer while the latter tells us the intensity of the effects from a given thing. The categories from IARC for cancer hazard are as follows: definite, probable, possible, don't know, probably not. The fact that processed meats and tobacco are both considered to be definitely carcinogenic does not tell us how much of an impact those things actually have. It just tells us the link between those things and cancer are believed to be strong. Also in the 'definite' category are things like alcohol, sunlight, birth-control pills, and Chinese-styled salted fish. Nobody recommends never stepping outside. There isn't a worldwide ban on birth-control pills. It takes a lots of sun over time or a ridiculous amount of birth-control pills to get cancer. It doesn't take that much tobacco to have a seriously negative impact on your health.

Another problem with the bacon hysteria is on the purported 18% risk of cancer for consuming processed meats like bacon. 18% risk of cancer for consuming how much bacon? It turns out consuming 2 sticks of bacon a day, every day, has an 18% relative risk for colorectal cancer. The 18% figure headlines like to stick in your face is relative risk. The chance of getting colorectal cancer over your lifetime is about 5%. An 18% relative risk brings that up to 0.05*1.18 or 5.9% chance of getting colorectal cancer over your lifetime. That is an absolute risk increase of about 0.9%. In other words, the risk is very small. That's not to say that people should go heavy on the bacon of course. Cancer is not the only ailment a person can have. Obesity or high blood pressure are problems too. It's probably not a good idea to eat a lot of processed meats all the time.

'Study finds video games increase aggression'.

What is 'aggression'? When I lose in a video game, I get angry. Being angry makes me aggressive. I also get angry at people that can't drive or people who can't read a study before jumping to conclusions. Also somewhat relevant is that fact that the latest study does not nullify all of the older studies. A positive study also doesn't 'cancel out' a negative study. The specifics of the studies matter. Even if all of the studies hold up to scrutiny, the objective viewpoint is to consider it as what it is: contradictory data in a debatable field of study. I understand that people don't like nuance or uncertainty, but that is reality much of the time.

'Latest study finds that mice and rats exposed to cell phone radiation have an increased risk of brain and heart cancers.'

If you have been keeping up with the latest news, you probably know which study I am referencing here.  This is the study published in March done by the US government where 2,000 rats and mice were subjected to signals modulated to GSMA and GSM standards at 900 and 1200mhz frequencies. After two years, the researchers report a 'low incidence' of brain and heart cancers. (The data has not been released.) Not surprisingly, people who believed cell phones caused cancer jumped onto this study without actually reading it.

To first state the obvious: Mice and rats are not humans. Studies that are done on mice cannot be directly ported over to humans, otherwise nobody would ever do human trials. Let's assume the results of rat studies are directly comparable to human studies for the sake of argument though. Following the results of this study, female humans are immune to cell phone radiation, whereas males need to be careful. You will get more brain and heart cancers, but you will also live longer. (But only if you use the cell phone to talk to your friends for nine hours a day to get the full benefit!)

The rats in the study also did not behave normally. The type of cancers the radiation-doused mice received were typical of older mice of that species. Since the control mice (the ones that got no radiation) died early, they might have gotten the same cancers had they lived long enough. This study also wasn't peer reviewed. Well, technically picking out the peers you want to review your study is peer review in that the people are your peers and they reviewed it, but that is not the peer review people typically mean when it comes to science. When published to a pre-publication site, it got hammered.

Also worth noting is that the cell phone has a real value. What absolute risk of cancer one is willing to tolerate for a given activity varies for each person. But if you are really worried about non-ionizing radiation, you should probably be more scared about the giant nuclear reactor people often get exposed to, causing a cancer that will kill about 10,000 people in the US alone. It fires both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. You meet it every time you go outside. It's called the sun.

'Study finds an 87% increased risk for autism for babies who's mothers took anti-depressants during pregnancy.'

As you might guess, that 87% figure is a relative risk increase. The risk of getting an autistic baby is about 1%. That makes the absolute risk increase a little bit less than 1%. There are other things to consider. Maybe the anti-depressants aren't the cause, it's the depression or the things depressed mothers have to go through. Maybe abstaining from anti-depressants will cause harms elsewhere (like self-harm). Everybody has heard of the phrase, 'correlation is not causation'. However, most people don't seem to believe it. They sure don't act like they do. Sometimes looking at a link between two things is not enough to get the full story. The world is more complicated than that.

There are two types of studies: observational studies and experimental studies. Cohort and case control studies are studies that look at some group of people and in an attempt to look for correlations. On the other hand, a randomized controlled trial is an experimental study. They both have strengths and weaknesses. RCTs are expensive and have a smaller sample size than observational studies. If people are studying a rare phenomenon, it would be hard to gather a large enough group of people for RCTs to show anything. If the thing studied takes a long time to show results, then it would be extremely time consuming to follow people over the years. It's also unethical to do some RCTs on humans. However, RCTs are still the golden standard of research today. People are gathered randomly, with one group given a control (for example, a placebo) and another given the real pill. RCTs are not prone to many of the confounding factors of cohort studies. If we look at people's life expectancy on or off heart medication who have hypertension, we might not be controlling for factors like race, age, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, or other factors. People who take medication might simply be the type of people who are more sick to begin with or are more willing to exercise or eat right.

There are many possible confounding factors for a study. Even if a study is done correctly, the conclusions one draws from a study may be incorrect. We have to consider sample size, correlation vs causation, and whether the study is directly applicable to humans. Mouse studies are not the same thing as human studies. My point about sample size might seem like useless ranting, but in fact it is a huge problem when it comes to studies on diet. The sample size of many diet studies is downright shameful. For example, one of the commonly quoted studies for the anti-artificial-sweeteners crowd is a study looking at people and their gut bacteria. Turns out, the study randomly took 7 people and dosed them with FDA's maximum allowed levels of saccharide for six days straight. This is the type of studies we are dealing with: Groups of less than 10 people, often with little control. A study is only as good as how well it's done. A meta-analysis (analysis of many studies) is only as good as the studies included for the analysis.

Science is very complicated and it takes a decent background in a particular field to be able to make heads or tails of a study by oneself. I totally understand why people would fall for a bacon scare headline. But many people I have met over the years seem to believe they are the experts on diet and exercise. When I challenge their beliefs and invite them to sit down with me and look at the studies regarding to our debate, they always turn it down. Many people are underqualified and overconfident, which is classic Dunning-Kruger. They want to have their worldview reinforced, not challenged.

Most of the blame goes to the science communicators: the people writing the headlines and articles online and in print. These people are paid to write factually correct information and to whip up informed opinions about various issues. The burden of crafting a headline that doesn't cause misconceptions to the person who only reads headlines is on the journalists. Unfortunately it seems like many of them are either intentionally incompetent or helplessly incompetent.

I was on a subreddit called 'Futurology' a couple of months ago. This is a subreddit that contains many posts about new and exciting headlines about the latest scientific 'breakthroughs'. One of the threads was about solar panels which generate electricity from falling raindrops. The headline sounded promising until we start to crunch the numbers on the efficiency penalty for developing such a solar panel. The amount of raindrops required for the solar panel to produce enough electricity to match a typical solar panel would be about 2 trillion drops per square meter, continuously. One commenter posted that future solar panels are almost guaranteed to be the type that can generate electricity from raindrops. To which I responded:

Will and might are two very different things. Many things start out inefficient and end up inefficient. Science is a graveyard of dead ideas. People remember the hits and forget the misses. All that has to happen for this predicted future to never happen is for people to find a better way of getting power that doesn't involve raindrops. I'm not in the business of predicting the future for a good reason. Plenty of sensationalist headlines with little real world benefits to show for it just makes people doubt science.

Many, many things are interesting and promising lines of research. But we should always be candid about the current obstacles that scientists face and how far they are from achieving what they want. Just saying 'future solar panels will be like this this and this' means either the person writing the headline is pointing to something so obvious as to render the headline useless, or the person is being sure of things they cannot be sure about.

Finally, I leave you with a segment from John Oliver about scientific studies. (Note: This is not a random video I threw in here to make my post look more snazzy, it's actually educational and entertaining.) Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go argue with more people about artificial sweeteners, GMOs, coffee, and soda.

Credits:

raygirl.deviantart.com

Thoughts From Vegas

This post is about the Vegas trip I took in January 2016. It contains pictures taken during the trip, all of the quips on Facebook I wrote during that time, and a little extra. On Facebook I experimented by turning Facebook into Twitter inspired by Neil deGrasse Tyson's Tweets.

I think a fitting song would be Two Step from Hell's 'Lost in Las Vegas'. It's a more quiet theme which is a departure from the movie trailer kind of stuff I'm used to them releasing.

Thoughts From Vegas

Twilight means the sun has set, in that it is below the horizon. That doesn't mean everything is pitch dark, however. There are different phases of twilight based on how many degrees below the horizon the sun is (from 6 to 18 degrees). Dusk is a part of twilight.

Back to our favorite topic though: Nacho cheese. It is a processed cheese, aka a "cheese product". Doesn't sound nearly as appetizing when I call it that, yeah? Cheese products are not legally allowed to be called cheese in the United States. This means your Craft Singles "American Cheese-product" is not cheese.

Maybe one last comment about cheese before I start to look kooky. Did you know that the characteristic holes in Swiss Cheese used to be considered undesirable? In general, the larger the holes in the cheese, the more pronounced the flavor due to a longer fermentation process. If the holes are too large, it can be difficult to slice. Swiss Cheese without any holes is called "blind".

According to the text on a chopsticks wrapper, chopsticks originated during the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 BC), as a substitute for knives at the table. Confucius equated knives as acts of aggression and are therefore unfit to dine.

Hot foods. Pain has never hurt so good. Ate some Thai food today. Got a spoon and made sure I got a nice mouthful of chili flakes.

But a mouthful of chili peppers is no match for the Carolina Reaper, which registers ~1.85 million Scoville Units. Even the amazing and fearsome Carolina Reaper is dwarfed by a pepper spray however. It weighs in at an impressive 5.5 million Scoville Units.

But maybe you like it hot. Like, life-threatening hot. No worries, I don't judge. Pure capsaicin is 16 million Scoville Units. It is a dangerous substance. Capsaicin can't get any hotter than pure capsaicin, but there are 'molecular analogues' that are more dangerous than it. A cactus found in Morocco contains a waxy substance that is essentially capsaicin on steroids. That substance is called Resiniferatoxin. Attaching itself to the receptors for abrasion and heat pain, this toxin causes an uncontrollable release of calcium ions at such intensity, the nerve cells die. Ironically, the hottest substances in the world... aren't hot.

Most casino games are basically arcade games for adults.

You see those traffic lights from Vegas? They have flashing yellow arrow turn signs. Flashing arrow signs.

You see those warriors from Hammerfell? They have curved swords. Curved swords. (I was going to make more Skyrim puns, but then I took an arrow in the knee.)

Fallout: New Vegas told me there would only be 4 casinos in Vegas. Where the hell are the securitrons?

Fallout taught me that with a lockpicking skill of 100, I can picklock the cashier's door and jack all their stuff. Unfortunately, lockpicking was not one of my tag skills and I never picked up a Locksmith's Reader.

OTHOUGHTS FROM VEGAS: on a scale ot drunkenness from 0 to 10 I'm at about 9001.

Saw the Trump Tower today. I guess Mexicans aren't allowed in there. Maybe Trump has set up a force field that instantly perforates any Mexicans within 500 feet of its premises.

I'm glad that even when I was about to puke while typing an earlier Facebook post about my drunkenness, I was able to use proper punctuation.

Went to a casino named Paris today. I guess that means I basically know all there is to know about France. French people must love gambling. Oh, and bands with loud music. And chocolate gift shops.

In chess, the French Defense probably just involves retreating all of your pieces.

All of my Facebook-turned-Twitter posts today are 110% serious.

Somebody opened a command prompt and spam typed "yolo" into it in Fry's.

If the pole is horizontal, she's a gymnast. if the pole is vertical, she's a stripper.

Thoughts from Home: Oh my god, my email inbox! It's a horror show!

Getting Drunk

Due to some... complications, I didn't get drunk on the casino floor. Mark brought the goods when he came into my hotel room though. It was several days into the trip, and by then Mark's uncle and grandma came to join the fun. I was aware that I was the only person in the room that had not really drank alcohol before. I've taken a sip or two, but they were really just little sips and not enough to affect my cognitive functions at all. I digress.

I was aware that if anybody is going to get wasted, it's probably going to be me. I am male, but I am a very lightweight male with no tolerance to alcohol at all. My parents didn't strike me as super-duper drinkers either. Still, it wasn't enough to prevent me from what was to come.

Poison never looked so pretty.

We took a shot basically back to back, with only a few minutes of time in between. By the time I downed the second, I felt my face getting a bit warm. Apparently when an Asian person blushes due to alcohol, it is called 'Asian Glow'. More or less I acted the way I normally would despite the fact that I was getting more and more drunk. (I did consider saying things I normally wouldn't seriously consider, but I thought about how I would normally act and decided against it.) I tested my ability to walk in a straight line. By the 5th shot it was pretty compromised. After the 7th, Mark asked me to try shaking my head back and forth. It was disorienting enough to cause me to drop to one knee. Soon after I started seeing stars, and a minute after that I found myself puking into the toilet. Mark's uncle tried to comfort me by saying that this is all perfectly 'normal'. Not really any consolation though.

By drinking a ridiculous amount of fluids and puking over and over (some, on purpose), I managed to expel most of the alcohol that I ingested earlier. The puking took its toll on my throat though, as it began to hurt for a week afterwards. Alcohol causes blood vessels to dilate. This is why people blush and feel warmer when they drink. This improves circulation. (Chronic increased blood pressure from serious drinkers is not related to this effect.) This also moves blood closer to the skin, which is why the warmth is in some ways deceptive. The person is getting colder while feeling warmer. This effect was illustrated (kind of) in a Skyrim mod called 'Frostfall', where drinking alcohol decreases exposure for a limited period of time before the player gains back the exposure he lost and then some... Resulting in a net positive gain in exposure, bringing the player closer to hypothermia. But I digress again! So anyways, that's why I was shivering even though I didn't feel cold. Hours after the ordeal I managed to sleep. I woke later that day without a hangover because the alcohol ingested was purged and massive amounts of fluids came into my body.

Probably a person or two in the past have questioned why I don't like to drink alcohol. The answer about how I like to have my senses sharp is part of it. I can imagine a scenario where somebody goes out to eat and drinks an alcoholic beverage, with no legal way get home by car anymore. Many, many people die each year due to alcoholic consumption. Part of it is from traffic accidents. Another good reason why I don't drink alcohol is because it tastes like shit. I know some people drink for the effect and after a few times it doesn't seem so bad anymore. I'm not sure I want to like it though. And I certainly can't imagine paying money to get drunk. Given the choice to do it for free, I would typically pass.

Wrapping It Up

If you know me well you know I rarely leave the house, and I'm not really the type of person that likes to take trips. Trips cost money. I dislike travel. By sleeping through the drive and having most of my expenses paid for me, most of my qualms are gone. Plus, it was the last time I could meet with a friend for a very long time. Perhaps the last meaningful thing we'll do together. We were there for an entire week. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Between photography and food and my laptop and just hanging out before it all ended, I managed to find something to do most of the time.

Hash browns, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and gravy. Sublime.

Photography... oh man. I bought a mirrorless Sony a5100 camera because the camera I had took the adjective 'potato' to a whole new level. I traded some flexibility for compactness and portability. Got it used for $350. However, the lack of the traditional viewfinder makes it hard to judge how the shot will come out. This caused some pictures to be too dark and outside scenes to be poorly color balanced. (No, the weather in Las Vegas doesn't turn everything blue.)

Thanks for sticking with me this far. Sometimes I really don't even know why people bother to read my blog. There are so many blogs out there to choose from. So that's that then. This was the 2016 trip to Las Vegas. Peace out.

I was sad that I didn't get a clear picture here. The middle ring looks very pretty! Too bad it was like $900.

I did get something before the trip ended though.

I had to change iso and aperture on the fly really quickly, but this would've came out very nicely had the white balance not gone to shiiiiite. Can't bother to Aftereffects.

Nice little fountain.

It appears that some casinos take the Chinese zodiac seriously. Some garden shots for the year of the monkey. That clear concave bar you're seeing is actually just water shot through a relatively slow shutter speed.

Last shot before I go.

Limits of Discourse

Dialogue is great. Debates, yay, debates. War of ideas. You get to see other people's viewpoints. Learn something new, make new connections. It's great. Except when it's not.

There is a naive part of me that feels there is a way to get to the bottom of every controversy. That, if I meticulously dissect every argument from somebody who doesn't think clearly, I can get them to concede or at least seriously doubt their beliefs.

Sure, I have been wrong before. It's easy to proclaim how many times one is wrong in an attempt to secretly convey their real message: It's not that I am closed-minded, it's that your arguments are wrong. Saying and doing are two different things of course. I have felt the reluctance to admit I was wrong when I realized I was wrong. Sometimes I explicitly admit that I was wrong. Sometimes I implicitly admit I am wrong by changing my argument around the point made, or I alter my conclusions based on the new, correct information. Yet, on some occasions I stoop the to same lows I accuse others of. I simply stop talking instead of admitting I am wrong. More and more I am making an effort to stop that. Sometimes though, the reason behind the abrupt end on my part is because I simply don't know what to say anymore. Maybe I am thrown into uncertainty and I need time to process. By the time I get the epiphany (if I do), the conversation has long since ended. Or maybe I realized the argument was a waste of time and I lost my interest.

But when I'm on the other end, I get annoyed. It reminds me of a post I made on Facebook about computers. Multiple people, each making an argument, getting it refuted, and bailing. I try to get them back into the conversations by tagging them and asking, 'Do you agree with my conclusion?'. Nothing. There is no accountability. People don't want to appear to be wrong.

I am a person that tries to believe in things that are real. Yeah, everybody says that about themselves. Consider this though: I used to be anti-gay-marriage. I used to staunchly argue against people who proclaim to be atheists. I used to emotionally attack those who believe morality could be subjective or relative. I used to think that justice must be better than mercy. I really do feel that (for the most part), I put in a decent effort to have my thoughts be modified by incoming evidence. Yet, I argue with some people and it's as if their heads live in another reality which abides by their own version of logic.

It should have been more obvious. There are people who believe Obama is an atheist, Muslim, communist, socialist, Satan worshiper that wants to instill marshal law. Few years ago when I typed in 'Obama is...' into Google search, the fourth results was 'Obama is the anti-Christ.' Even if I was the most skilled debater in history, I could ever get through to those people. Some things I see as truths. I think my arguments are valid and I don't really understand why or how people could disagree with me. And it can drive me nuts. Then again, maybe this is the same feeling the person on the other end is having. Sometimes I just want to shout, 'I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG, OK?'. Sometimes I want to invoke my authority: I've written a book about religion, buzz off. I have the largest Haswell overclocking thread on the entire internet. I've seen your objection many times, and probably phrased better in most of those instances.

But that's really, kindda a douchy, terrible thing to do. So I don't. I mean, saying 'do you know who I am?' feels like the height of arrogance. I don't feel comfortable saying it.

I'm going to try something new. I will try not to let my opinions about somebody's intellect dominate how I interact with them. If I met somebody online to talk about video games and I find out they have crazy beliefs about politics or religion which cannot be shaken, then I will tell them those topics are off limits. Either we can continuing arguing about these things, or we can talk about what we came to talk about... games or music or whatever. One of these options maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering, and the other does the exact opposite. Some fights are not worth having. Some arguments are constructive, some are not. If there's nothing left to glean from the debate, then why not just leave it? There is probably no way for me to get through to them anyways. Sometimes the opportunity cost is too great.

You probably already know that I'm referencing a recent event. I met somebody and we talked about video games all the time, until I brought up free will. I stopped the game I was playing to argue back and forth about free will. At the end I realized I have just wasted a part of my life achieving nothing but bringing more negative energy to the world. Again, that's not to say that I will dodge every conflict. Knowing my personality all too well, I will end up going into more arguments than I need to and staying in it for longer than I really should. It's like going to sleep too late: You know you'll hate yourself for staying up so late come tomorrow morning, but you do it anyways. And next morning, you tell yourself, 'holy shit, this is terrible, NEVER. AGAIN.', but you also know in the back of your mind that you're going to do it again. It's like compulsively checking social media, or reading your hate mail even if you know they are the minority of the messages heading your way.

===

What is Intellectual Dishonesty?

It looks like I need to clear up what I mean by 'intellectual dishonesty' due to some misunderstandings. Hopefully I can end them here. The following are just my opinions, and what I mean when I say what I say.

Dishonesty means lying. Lying means to saying things that are not true with the intent to deceive. Jokes don't count. Omitting something important instead of saying something that is not true in order to deceive is an implicit lie. It is a distinction without much of a difference. The other person is trying to deceive me. They are a liar and cannot be trusted. You cannot 'accidentally lie'.

Intellectual honesty is very different. Intellectual dishonest is a failure to apply standards of rational evaluation that one is aware of in a self-serving fashion. (That's an awesome definition I copied from a wiki, by the way. :p )

Somebody could make a terrible argument full of fallacies which the bystanders should all easily notice. But moreover, the argument is so terrible it's pretty much disingenuous; even the person making the argument probably knows better on some level.

There are many examples of this. Shifting of the burden of proof is a classic one. Another is the argument from ignorance. The ad hominem is well-known. The 'if you don't care, why did you post?' comments are intellectually dishonest arguments because those arguments are almost always a semantic word trick. (For example, the person complaining is equivocating the word, 'care'. When somebody says they don't care, they mean they are not interested in the subject matter, and they commented to say they are annoyed by your beating of a dead horse and spamming the world with more useless commentary.)

These are all arguments which a good percentage of people intuitively feel is wrong on some level. But there are many other intellectually dishonest ways of debating. A person could change the subject when their current argument is failing. By keeping the other person mired in tangents, one can keep real criticism at bay. It's easy to bury the other person in nonsense that takes a long time to debunked. It can be hard to call somebody out when they do this.

Parroting statistics that are obviously dubious is also intellectually dishonest. The person is putting far more time scrutinizing others than their own statistics. A good example is the '1 in 4 women are raped' statistic.

So really, what I am saying is that being 'intellectually dishonest' means committing fallacies or using cheap debating tactics to prove a point or to deflect criticism so that one never has to deal with them. And this process has to be conscious on some level. Some people use these terrible tactics knowing full well they are doing so; in that case, it would border on dishonesty. But in many other cases, the person is too emotional and frazzled to fully recognize what they are doing. They just know that they are grasping for straws and making unsound arguments.

A recent example of shocking intellectual dishonesty is on Sam Harris' podcast with Omar Aziz. Aziz strongly disagreed with Sam Harris on the link between Islam and terrorism. To bolster his argument, he tried to defame Harris by claiming him to get into the Islam/Terrorism book business as a get quick rich scheme. When challenged by Harris with actual book publishing realities and specifics Aziz did not know, Aziz refused to back down... Repeatedly pointing out that Harris made SOME money on his book, and some is more than none if he had simply released his book for free on his blog.

I believe most people say things they think are true. Almost everybody is intellectually dishonest on some level, and some much more than others. If a person is explicitly aware what they are saying is untrue, he is likely not to say it in the first place. The mind has many ways of tricking itself and others though. Sometimes it's clear somebody is rejecting an idea because of the ramifications if it were true. There's a gut-feeling, a very defensive attitude that makes one want to do anything to make what the other person is saying not true. Of course, a perfectly rational person would let you carry them helplessly along your lines of thinking and logical arguments to arrive at your conclusion.

Do I feel that religious people are lying about their experiences? No. I don't think their experiences have correlations with reality though.

I have never seen Sam Harris as frustrated as he was during that podcast. Maybe Sam needs to do more of that mindfulness meditation he likes. And as for myself, I am not a very patient person. I'll go another way: I'll drop topics I don't want to discuss with some people. I do not see eye to eye with some people when it comes to intelligence, but we can still try to have fun talking about random, inconsequential things.

Discourse can be good and it can be bad.

Hearts of Stone

Today I want to talk about the first expansion for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I consider it to be the best game of 2015.

First some background: Witcher 3 is by CD ProjecktRed, which is a Polish company full of Polish people. I'm not even sure their CEO can even speak English. The game is set in Scandinavia with Polish music played by traditional instruments. Witcher 3 is an open-world RPG. The land is vast, and the graphics top notch. Running around in Skellige where it's snowing, along with Ard Skellig playing is just sublime.

Hearts of Stone revolves around Gaunter O'dimm, a 'mangy vagrant' the player meets very early on in the main storyline. Gaunter O'dimm is 'evil incarnate', and some might call him 'the devil'. He will grant the wish of anybody, but he will grant them exactly what they wished for. He crafts contracts with verbal tricks that lead people to their downfall.

For example, a man named Olgierd seeked out Gaunter O'dimm, looking for immortality. In exchange, Gaunter asked for the soul of somebody he is close to. He cared for only two people in the world: His wife and his brother. He choose to let his brother die. A day later, a bunch of ruffians popped up and outnumbered his brother 5 to 1. Frightened, his brother hid in the cellar, only to be executed unceremoniously.

As Olgierd went on living for years and years, eventually he got a heart of stone. He stopped caring about anything in life. He's already seen everything in the world, and he become apathetic to the it. This includes his wife who killed herself out of loneliness. In getting his wish for immortality, he had lost the two people he cared for in the world and his humanity.

There was one final term in the contract: Olgierd makes up three wishes which have to be fulfilled by somebody other than Gaunter (eg, the player), after which Olgierd and Gaunter must both be walking on the moon in order for O'dimm to get the rights to his soul.

Gaunter eventually tricks Olgierd by meeting with him on a temple with a mosaic of a moon. The contract states that they both have to be on the moon, but the contract didn't specify WHICH moon. This is based on an old Polish folk story, Twardowski. In that story, the devil makes a pact with a man for his immortality. The devil may only take the man's soul should he visit Rome. Eventually the devil has the last laugh, as one day the man visits an inn named 'Rome' and his soul is forfeit.

The 'deal with the devil' is called the Faustian Bargain. The name is from the legend of Faust from German folklore. It's also featured in some Christian folktales. The moral in general is to be careful what you wish for.

Ever heard of the phrase, 'the devil is among us'? It is literally true in Witcher 3, as during the questline, Gaunter O'dimm pops up as random passerbys, wearing a different outfit each time. I played the DLC and I never even noticed this; that is how well he blends in. Gaunter's face looks generic and normal, yet once we learn about his true nature, his face becomes quite sinister. Ironically, the initials of Gaunter O Dimm is GOD, but according to legends he would be the exact opposite of God.

Should the player allow Gaunter to take Olgierd's soul, the player is granted a free wish, which the player can choose to turn down. Either way, the scene ends with Olgierd playing with Olgierd's skull, whistling his theme. It's short but very effective. Very haunting.

Should the player do one of the optional objectives leading up to the final meeting on the moon, the player can choose to risk both his and Olgierd's lives in a battle of wit. The player has answer the devil's riddle by finding it in his little playground. The answer is 'reflection', and there are many mirrors in the world, but O'dimm destroyed each one as the player approached them. Eventually you break a wall and let water leak out. Quickly look into the puddle to see your own reflection. The player defeats O'dimm in a duel of wit. If Gaunter O'dimm is truly evil incarnate, then perhaps evil can never be killed. He will be back; and he says as much as he slowly applauds before he is banished.

The devil is treacherous, but never cheats. He grants people what they ask for, but not what they want. Whereas the main antagonist of the main game are stereotypical bad guys, here the enemy is among us and looks just like everybody else. It's a lot more sinister. Gaunter O'dimm along with the Crones in the main game are what I consider to be among the best antagonists in video gaming history. CD ProjecktRed has turned old Polish myths into haunting and interesting realities. What I write is not as compelling as playing the game yourself. Also, I find most games to have mediocre writing and story. Witcher 3, with both Hearts of Stone and the Baron questlines actually got me to think a bit about the lore and the ramifications of my actions. It's not life-changing stuff, but it's a breath of fresh air.

His smile fair as spring, as towards him he draws you 

His tongue sharp and silvery, as he implores you 

Your wishes he grants, as he swears to adore you 

Gold, silver, jewels- he lays riches before you 

Dues need be repaid, and he will come for you 

All to reclaim, no smile to console you 

He'll snare you in bonds, eyes glowin', afire 

To gore and torment you, till the stars expire

Quick Rant on People's Outrage Over Skylake BCLK OC on Non-K Skus

Skylake is the current generation of CPUs for the mainstream platform from Intel. It came out H2 last year. Some unapproved (by Intel) UEFI updates from ASRock allowed base clock overclocking of their non-K skus. For a while there it looked like Intel was OK with it, as other motherboard vendors bring out their own UEFI updates to unlock base clock overclocking for non-K skus.

In the past, base clock overclocking was ignored because it was hard to get anything substantial out of it. To get really good overclocks you had to buy a K-sku processor. That changed with Skylake. The technical reasons are beside the point.

Very recently UEFI updates started pulling this functionality. The obvious reason is because Intel had a word with these companies. Now people are mad, calling Intel "the height of arrogance". Really? Is Intel really at the height of their arrogance? Real overclocking has been blocked on non-K skus since Sandy Bridge era. We're talking Jan 2011 era. The lack of real overclocking tools for non-K skus has been a thing for FIVE YEARS. This is nothing new. Nobody expected for base clock overclocking to be allowed on non-K skus when Skylake came out because to allow it now would be to remove the point of K-skus. If you want to overclock, buy a K-sku processor.

Yeah, patching the loophole is a problematic PR move. But it's only problematic because consumers wouldn't react rationally. Yeah, AMD processors all allow overclocking. And they need it to catch up. They have no choice at this point anyways because they are so behind in single-threaded performance. The premium Intel is charging for K-skus is small, $50 or less. Yes, it's problematic for people who want to overclock on an i3 part. That's life. Intel is in the driver's seat, and all things considered, it could have been much worse. People are mad that they were given the ability to cheat through something they couldn't do before, and that the loophole got patched.

Actually, did the loophole get patched? You can bet that the UEFI versions which allow overclocking on those chips get reuploaded somewhere else. If you want somebody to blame, blame the motherboard vendors for getting your hopes up by cheating. If you really want to blame more people, blame Intel for having the unlocked-sku system, but don't be selective about it, hate all of it. I don't hear outrage about locked processors since probably the initial change with Sandy. People were OK with it. Now they're not. Or maybe these people can blame themselves for being whiny little kids.

Do people complain with the same ferocity when Intel turned tick tock to tick tick tock and then to tick tick tick tock? Intel needs a new clock because their current one is broken, lacking competition, motivation (desktop performance is hardly the bee's knees nowadays), and easy node shrinks/improvements. Oh, but they don't.

Yeah, people just want to whine that their cheat got patched. It seems far more egregious to stop a nifty loophole than to have rules that made such loopholes necessary in the first place. The grand irony is that the rants about Intel fixing a loophole and thus proving themselves to be arrogant actually just demonstrate the arrogance of the people who make such a rant.

Brain Droppings IV (More like a waterfall)

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome to Brain Droppings IV! It has become a tradition now for me to write a blog post each year where I list a lot of short quips and ideas I've stumbled across or thought of during that year. This is the post for 2016 with stuff I read and heard on 2015.

Some parts of this post will be silly and not very-serious, and some will be very serious. It's Brain Droppings, the nature of it is chaotic and not well-organized. If you are the (probably non-existent) people that found this blog post before today (1/14/2016), know that I did not intend to publish this post before today, and what you read was even more disorganized and incomplete. Buckle up, we have a lot of ground to cover!

Brain Droppings I
Brain Droppings II
Brain Droppings III

Firstly, just watch this video. Just go watch it.

The two things I really took away with the video are:

1. While some things seem to make no sense and look inefficient, be mindful about just how large of a problem it really is compared to other problems.

2. When we casually move from one issue to the next, nothing ever gets changed. Outbursts of anger followed by amnesia is not constructive.

Next, why don't you listen to this track by the London Philaharmonic of 'Far Horizons', a track by Jeremy Soule for Skyrim, while you read the rest of this blog post? It will enhance your reading experience my 13.3985%, guaranteed or your money back!

Free Will:

My opinion of free will is this: Anything and everything we can and will do is bound by the state of molecules in the universe before our birth. Physics does the rest.

We are like a computer which reacts to inputs, doing different things depending on the state of the molecules inside the computer. What the computer will do can be predicted. If we break it down to quantum mechanics, we simply get more chaos and uncertainty, not more free will.

We are the sum of our experiences and physiology which we get by chance. Free will is an illusion. When a brain tumor forces a man to kill his family, we understand the man is simply unlucky. Similarly, I see criminals as malfunctioning people who got the wrong environment, the wrong genetics, the wrong physical causalities that compels a person to commit the crime they did. They could not have done otherwise given those inputs.

This doesn't mean that punishment is therefore useless. Nothing good is lost and something good is gained. We now have a basis for incredible amounts of empathy. Vengeance now makes no sense. Our goal now is to rehabilitate, not to punish for the sake of it.

Punishment & Pedophilia:
Punishment that works well only prevents a second offense, whereas treatment attempts to prevent the first offense. If you've committed a crime and seeking help just gets you arrested, you're not very likely to seek help. This ties in well with my belief on free will, which depicts criminals as unlucky people born with the wrong genes and given the wrong upbringing to cause a criminal to form. 

And with that mindset, I think I am more open to seeing pedophiles as unlucky people: They are people which, through no fault of their own, get sexual pleasure from children. People don't really choose their sexual fetishes or the way their brains were wired. Of course, most fetishes are harmless. Unfortunately, some are not if indulged in. And these people have to deal with this urge their entire lives. Some of them might feel a lot of guilt for even having such desires. Many of them plan to never, ever touch a child inappropriately. It's not fair. Obviously, it sure as hell isn't fair for their victims.

Random Crap:

Money can’t buy happiness, but I’d rather be depressed in a Lexus. ;)

Welcome to the internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI!

It's always annoyed me when people attack others by twisting the name of their side or their name. Like "Libtard". Or "Richard Dorkins". Or "Stefan Moldydew". How old are you guys? Did I step into a portal back into my elementary school years? What the actual fuck?

SJWs and the Regressive Left are the Tea Parties of the Left.

The internet lets people access information from all types of sources and people. Some people take this opportunity to shelter themselves, to only visit communities that reinforce one's worldview. Personally, I find Facebook's trending feature to be useful. I have read many arguments from people of different point of views.

That settles it then. I'm moving to Mercury so I can get birthday presents every 88 Earth days.

'[Some] people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world, they don't care if it's a scar.' That is the quote from John Green which Derek Muller (of Veritasium) referenced when talking about the Paris attacks. I think it's kindda fitting.

The study of physics is actually atoms trying to understand themselves.

It seems to me that either the universe always existed or that it had a beginning, therefore there was a period of true nothingness, not even space itself. Either possibility seems impossible.

Did you know that nuts are fruits? The name 'pecan' comes from the Algonquian word meaning 'a nut requiring a stone to crack'. Ironically, pecan is not technically a nut, but a drupe. It is one of the most recently domesticated crops on a large scale.

Do you worry about general AI? I worry about general AI. Although, I also worry about what I'm going to eat for lunch. 

"The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens work." - Galileo, on the Bible and the conflict between religious dogmas of his time and his discoveries.

Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is, you're stupid and you make bad decisions.

How do you stop illegal surveillance? Why, you just make it legal, of course! 

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then, if knowledge is power, what is the NSA?

If people pretty much only have two legs or less (due to tragedies, etc), wouldn't the average amount of legs people have be below 2? That's awesome. The next time I meet a good looking girl, I'll open by asking her if she knew that I have an above-average amount of legs.

A man walks into the bar and orders ten drinks. The bartender says, "Well that is an order of magnitude". 

I'm convinced that our house would be better if the front yard didn't exist and the house ate up the space the front yard used to be a larger house.

I heard an idea that the Vikings traded some things with the Native Americans back in the day. For example, they got some cheese. Word is, the Vikings came back and furiously killed the natives... possibly because the Vikings were lactose intolerant? (From the Vikings point of view, they were poisoned!) That's funny, but also such a sad reason for killing.

That moment... when you realize there's a higher chance of getting killed by cars while trick-or-treating than by receiving maliciously tainted candy...

Actually, calling people sheep more often and stridently doesn't actually make you look more enlightened. It makes you look like an ass, and nobody wants to listen to what you have to say. If your wish for change is larger than your ego, you would try to explain your position in a way that doesn't cause people to type in all caps.

I don't understand why some people think buying $1000+ headphones is crazy. Crazy in that differences noted  maybe placebo, I can dig. I think some people on the internet, mostly Youtube, are young and do not have significant disposable income. We are used to some things costing a lot and some things costing much less, when really the only thing that matters is one thing: What is the dollar to happiness ratio of something you want to buy? Consider the opportunity cost of that money. Personally I find it funny that $1000 headphones are crazy, yet spending ten times that, easily, on making your house look just a bit nicer, or ten times that figure to get a cooler looking house, is somehow okay. I mean, I think it's all okay, really, apart from the fact that maybe it's time to donate to charity at that point. I think people believe they themselves are open-minded people, but in reality they are not. Their minds open up to possibilities which are already mostly accepted by the mainstream or the younger generation.

Microsoft: Group Policy - Turn off Telemetry? Y/N
Yes? I'll take that as a no!

Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order? What makes that order of letters the correct one?

Clickbait for you, clickbait for me! Clickbait for everybody! I can already think of a grand new title for my Skylake overclocking guide:

Supercharge your CPU with these 3 tricks Intel doesn't want you to know!!!!!1111

And seriously, what the hell is up with numbering things in your article? 5 reasons why blah blah blah. I HATEEEEE these clickbaity sites. Their content sucks, their content delivery sucks, their ads suck. Everything about them is sucky. Now I want to title all of my posts with the most boring titles ever just to counteract this crap.

Time for a rant on journalism and medicine. You knew this was coming. You already know I have a negative opinion of shitty headlines. It's not a surprise then, that when people summarize the results of a study in a broad, sensationalist or incomplete way, I get angry. Studies are hard. We have to look at how it was funded,  who did the research, how it was done (there are many ways to do a study), and what the results actually are. If you can summarize the study in one sentence, the summary is incomplete. There are many ways to manipulate data. For example, take that bacon scare. Let's say eating bacon means a 20% increase in chance of a particular type of cancer. Let's just assume the study was done correctly, blah blah. What if I told you, that the 20% figure is a relative risk increase, and what scientists mean by 20% is a 20% increase of a very small chance of getting that particular type of cancer? It's the same thing with the autism and anti-depressant study. An 87% increase in relative risk of an absolute risk of 1% of getting a child with autism is a total of 1.87% chance of getting a baby with autism. And we have to consider other factors, that correlation is not causation. Maybe depressed mothers are what's to blame for autism. Maybe it's a specific type or brand of medication. Maybe skipping the treatment for mental health can cause higher fatalities elsewhere. I am tired of people who think they know more about medicine than scientists and think studies are meaningless because they appear to contradict. Maybe they do to them, because they only read headlines and they have no background in medicine. Maybe some studies do contradict and we need a larger sample size. Either way, science is complicated.

There are a lot of crazy things we know which we have become accustomed to. When astronauts float in the ISS, they are actually perpetually falling. We are all glowing, just not in the visible spectrum. If Planck's length is the shortest distance possible, what happens when the length of the electromagnetic wave reaches that length? We're all fucking living on a giant piece of rock spinning at close to 1000 miles per hour and if the rock were to stop spinning, we would all fly east at close to that speed (depending on how close to the equator you happen to be). There are realms of dangers invisible to us, from radiation to a whole world of animalcules, little teeny weeny living things that are all around us and inside us, and yes, outnumber us in terms of the number of cells we have versus theirs. And viruses, which aren't living yet still evolves and kills and reproduces. Isn't the world a crazy place?

Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about clouds seem to be stationary and calm - yet when sped up to a moderate pace, look like the sky is a river flowing. No wonder humans have a hard time grasping timescales of millions and billions of years when thinking about evolution.

Did you know that re-fried beans aren't actually fried more than once? It came from a mistranslation. The more you know.

Is competitive gaming a sport? The Olympic committee thinks chess is a sport. Is golfing a sport? Whether competitive gaming classifies as a sport doesn't have any practical implications. It's semantics, it's just a classification problem. Misnomers happen all the time. Whatever competitive gaming is classified in the Taxonomy of Activities doesn't change what competitive gaming is.

And here is TotalBiscuit explaining Twitch:

Reading the Terms of Service is like reverse-masturbation: 95% of people don't do it, and the 5% that say they do are lying.

When I look at giveaways I often think about how long it takes to enter. How long would it take for me to enter my email address and like a few posts of theirs and how much mental energy do I have to spend to go back and unlike the page afterwards? If the prize is a thousand dollars worth of gear and there are ten thousand applications, why the hell am I spending over a minute of my time to earn an average of ten cents? So, I don't even bother anymore. ._. "Free" giveaways are never free.

There is a good correlation between the number of Greek alphabets you use in math and how smart you look.

In the long run, we're all dead. - John Maynard Keynes

Being wise and smart means knowing the entire debate was a waste of time and more of a dick measuring contest. Gotta pick and choose which debates are worth having.

Sam Harris brought up the idea of 'moral luck' in a podcast with Joe Rogan. Many people have driven when they've had one drink too many. Most people get away with it. But a few people simply get unlucky (in a sense) and kill somebody with their car. In other words, some people end up committing horrific crimes doing similar things many people do. There is an element of chance to this. Of course, how drunk you get before you decide not to drive at all is a major factor.

The mythology section of a bookstore is the graveyard of dead gods.

And here is a 30 second cutscene where Geralt of Rivia, the main protagonist of the video game, Witcher 3, reflects on events of a particular quest. I find these flashback moments of the game, along with the particular quest it references, to be one of the better moments of video game stories.

Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well that is a good thing because it's supposed to be poison. If it's making the tumor feel this queasy, then I'm OK with it.' - Christopher Hitchens

Neil Degrasse Tyson Perspective:
Maybe some aliens never managed to go interstellar because their planet is too large and it takes too much energy to leave the planet. And by the time the light has traveled to our telescopes, their civilization has died out already

Wonder what aliens think about our Universal Time.

Mysteries of the Universe: If I take a root beer and put it in a square glass, is it just a beer now? 

In Chemistry class the cylinders know more than you do because they're already graduated. Thermometers know more than cylinders though, because they have many degrees.

If people left carrots, celery, & hot tea for Santa on the table rather than milk & cookies, I bet he’d be much, much thinner.

I was once anti-biotic. But lately I've been more pro-biotic after reading more about their culture.

I wonder why nobody has ever called pre-historic cave paintings Graffiti. Maybe that’s precisely what it was back then.

After Koalas, Australian animals seem to come in only three varieties: those who want to eat you, inject venom in you, or hop.

Just an FYI: Stepping on an Ant is equivalent to a creature 10,000 times more massive than a Blue Whale stepping on you.

On ‪#‎FamilyGuy‬ Brian sweats, but Dogs don’t have sweat glands. I then figured Dogs don’t talk either. So I left that one alone.

I wonder if Accountants feel the urge to represent negative Temperatures in parenthesis.

My favorite line in "The Martian" trailer, uttered by Matt Damon, is “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”

Let's end this Neil deGrasse Tyson section with my favorite Neil deGrasse Tyson moment.

Let's get back to the silly random stuff! It's party time!

If a graphics card costs an arm and a leg, I think that says something negative about the value of my arms and legs... (Although, when I commented on Sennheiser's $55,000 headphones, I had to say ehh. It's getting there.)

Maybe sadists and masochists can come together and have this weird, but pleasurable relationship.

Why is it ok to want to look pretty, but not ok to want to look smart? 

As someone who is staunchly pro-life I would like to defund wars.

With billions of people on earth, I feel bad having any level of pride in anything, because somewhere, sometime, some large group of people have done it and did it better.

American politics is like Kingdom Hearts. Nobody gets what's going on, you fight over health, and Donald is there.

Why do I need a third party app to make Windows clock show seconds by default?

If you're not failing, you're not even trying. To get something you've never had, you need to do something you've never done. - Denzel Washington

A war on Christmas is a war on presents, and I won't stand for that.

Playing Skyrim at night with soup, garlic bread, and hot chocolate while it's raining outside is great. Highly recommended.

Yo dawg, I got Bill on speed dial. I'll tell him to close the internet for ya', it's no prob. (In case you don't understand the joke: Donald Trump suggested 'closing off the internet' by calling people like Bill Gates.)

They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later, when somebody says your name for the last time. - Bansky

In response to a thread I made regarding the FREEDOM Act, I said this:

"I'm trying to get the word out there in my own little way through this news story, which is why I am disappointed that my news article isn't very popular, even after I've bumped it. I think most people are of decent level of intelligence, it's just lack of knowledge and lack of interest.

It's like... who actually cares what the next AMD card is going to be called? Of course the NSA problem doesn't directly affect us today, losing our rights is less important than the next generation of graphics cards. It's not just due to the age demographics of LTT, it's much the same thing in OCN although OCN doesn't allow for anything remotely political.

I don't think it's that people think the NSA mass surveillance is good, very little people actually think that, it's just nobody actually cares. People are just interested in their hobbies, that's it, everybody is like that. Same with me, it's not like I'm actively campaigning to end world hunger. My co-worker asked me why I don't talk much, and I'm like, sure, let's talk about AI! Do you worry about AI taking over all of our jobs in the future? And then they quietly back away."

If anybody asks me about college, I'm going to reply by saying that I go to the College of Winterhold from now on. Great way to shut out conversation.

Making posts like these show me that I've learned some things and thought about some more things each year. It makes me feel better that I'm sitting in front of the computer all day.

"It's not the end of the world. But you can see it from here." -Eliza Cassan, Deus Ex: Human Revolution

There is a vitamin that vegans have to be careful to consume enough of. It's vitamin B12, a class of chemicals with a cobalt atom, yes, a cobalt atom - in the middle. It's a complicated chemical that needs to be obtained from bacteria, or sources that have eaten the bacteria or eaten those who have eaten the bacteria. Fermentated foods is one way to get that stuff in your system.

In America, we shoot turkey in November. In Russia, Turkey shoots you! (Referring to the incident where Turkey shot down Russian planes at around Thanksgiving time.)

Imagine if you are teaching somebody who is just as intelligent as you are, but specializes in another field - Your goal is to get them up to speed with what you know. That is what Steven Pinker said his professor once taught him. That is how you teach without looking arrogant.

I read something Nancy Gibbs wrote: '..so many conversations are fast, furious, in binary form - Istael or Palestine? Hillary or Bernie? Taylor or Nicki? When so many sound so certain about so much, there is little left to talk about, no interest, no appetite, just attitude.'

"You must be a heatsink!" "Why?" "Because I'm a huge fan."  #Computingpickuptips

What if men objectify women over looks and women objectify men over their utility?

There's nothing creepier than a politician trying to appear relatable in a video... 

My interests tend to be esoteric and niche. For example, Mugen itself is esoteric and niche already. But testing and ranking characters by strength by running Ordo to calculate ratings from a 150x150 Excel spreadsheet? Or Fallout: New Vegas, a mainstream game. But every time I make a thread talking about some game mechanic I noticed which everybody seems to have missed, or calculating the damage per second of weapons taking into account all the proper factors, I end up talking to an empty room.

During the moment of orgasm, I believe (and I might be wrong about this) that the release of prolactin in males suppresses the sex drive. I've always been fascinated by this. In an instant, how I feel and what I want can change drastically. I guess it's not that crazy considering that if a tiger were to pop up behind me, my mental state would change right quick. But still. I think it's pretty crazy.

I actually don't fully recall what I wrote in the blog post about The Fappening, but I think I was a little too harsh on the celebrities. I was reading some forum where people were talking about a leak, and some person felt that Jennifer Lawrence's pictures of her posing nude were okay, but that one picture of her with a face full of cum just destroyed his/her opinion of her. On some level I feel a little bad for bringing this back into people's attention. I also had a tough luck attitude towards those women. On the other hand, what is wrong with wanting cum on your face? This is a legitimate question. Don't judge her for what she likes with regards to sex. It's weird how we have these rules for sex, where these, these, and these types of fucking is okay, but these other types, totally not okay. Now, I didn't know a picture that was THIS sensitive was leaked for her, and I read about her response to the issue. So yeah, I'm coming around to her way of thinking. While it's dumb to upload your sensitive photos on the internet, she did keep it under lock and key and in a place that I would have thought would've been reasonably safe for storing data.

How I would feel about the breach of somebody's privacy depends on how private the information is, which in turn has to do with how well the secret is guarded. If somebody accidentally or purposefully left their nudes in a public place but in an envelope marked "private", I would feel a lot less sympathy for that person versus Jennifer Lawrence's situation. If you're too careless to guard your own secrets, you are either dumb or you don't care that much in the first place. But she DID guard her secrets. And those photos are more sensitive than I thought.

Podcasts sometimes take me for a ride to an unexpected place. The podcast with Joe Rogan and Daniele Bolelli was such an occasion. The idea is that even if a guy knows what to say, if he comes to the dating scene from a place of need and desperation, it somehow oozes out, and the other sex will feel that something's not quite right. Daniele's solution is to get some hookers... that way the guy isn't as desperate when they see a hot girl. Sometimes people act differently simply because the girl is hot, even if it's clear that nothing will ever happen between the two. Maybe if the guy knows he can get laid with another hot woman, the guy will be more relaxed, more true to himself when he interacts with these women. Then they brought up the idea of a woman who has education and money and comes at prostitution from a place of power. Here the woman gets to pick her clients, and might even look at the business as dating guys and sleeping around, but making bank at the same time.

These podcasts show me different perspectives on life. Like Daniele Bolelli talking about how strange it is to have English, which is to the point, compared to his native Italian, which is more flowery and wordy and flows. Or Christopher Ryan, who talks about his time in Spain, where people have a different perspective on life. If you want a burger and a shake, buy it and eat it outside, there's no need for a carryout. The server might take her time to get to you because she's on her phone with her boyfriend. Women know that men like women, and when men look at women they take it as a compliment, instead of thinking that some guy is 'eye raping them'. Or his studies on various cultures with very different views on sex and babies, like this one where the woman gets her own room, called the 'flower room', where she gets to sleep with whoever she wants (but the man must be gone by breakfast time the next day), and the family members take care of the children and the guy can just go wherever and leave. Different perspectives.

"She's only with you because of your money!"
"Well, good thing I have a lot of money then!"

A while back, a marine was reprimanded for peeing on a dead guy. We have this image of this ideal marine that stands up straight and has a perfectly pristine suit. But you don’t get a killer from that. You get a killer from somebody who has accepted their new reality and watched their friends get killed and gets so much hatred for the enemy. I think we are so detached from the violence to the point where we feel it's fine to kill somebody and launch drone strikes, but it's not okay to pee on them.

Death, Humility, and Life:

Living is its own reward. 

There is only one person you have to live the rest of your life with: Yourself. Don't live the rest of your life with an asshole.

It’s one thing to say ‘Many people know things I do not, and those people don’t know much either compared to the universe’… It’s another to internalize it. So in that respect I think humility takes some time to sink in. I think that's where knowledge and wisdom are different.

The dummies that exist in the world don’t matter. Neither do the ants which are far dumber than the dummies in the world. They are all irrelevant. Doesn’t mean I need this false humility either. I do know some things. Rather, humility should come from an honest assessment of one’s place in the world.

If karma is true, then the good you do which goes unrewarded deserves no reward and the people that do bad things and get rewarded deserved it. The fact that life isn't fair makes us strive to impose justice and reward the good when we actually see it. It allows us to appreciate it when it occurs and work harder to make sure it stays. 

"...black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up – there's a way out." - Stephen Hawking

Everybody has their blind spots, everybody is wrong about something. I'm sure we've all looked up to or highly regarded somebody only to find out that they have a bad stance on a particular topic. So then I ask myself: What am I horribly wrong about?

...I am half interested, half worried about this. 

Maybe, like most people, when I face a serious illness and I'm looking at Death in the face, I will realize just how pointless all of my worries here are, and how pointless it is to be anything but myself. Sometimes I wonder... if we all listed the 3 biggest worries we have in our lives, how different would they be?

Here is a summarized transcript of a tech podcast I listen to. Jason Calacanis, an American internet entrepreneur and investor, talked about the death of his friend here. I think the conversation is very interesting and profound. It impacted the way I looked at life. I am sharing this in hopes that maybe it will positively impact yours as well.

Jason: ...we live in a world in this industry of narcissistic champions of the world, and it's all about the singular person, whether it is Elon, Satya, Bill Gates, or whoever it is. Some people just go about it in a quiet way, and he was that guy who just went about it in a quiet way and was a mensch. We can all take a lesson, like, everyone take a note.

Owen: The best part of hearing you talk about a friend like that is that it makes you think about yourself. Man, should I be doing better? I could be doing better. I should go hug my kids this week, like extra because it's the biggest thing.

Jason: Life is very perplexing, you know? It's very perplexing when the best person you know goes first. That's what I have been struggling with the last 48 hours. Why does the guy who is the best go first? It doesn't make any sense. Then you think, gosh, the poor kids are going to have to grow up hearing the stories of how great their dad was. It's horrible and tragic, but also great that his legacy is great. Even the Facebook page is very powerful.

Leo: That's a phenomenal thing that that exists. That's a really great thing to have. His kids can read this 10 years from now.

Jason: It's just hard to comprehend. I think about the unfairness of death, and I don't know if any of us will be able to comprehend. After 911 I had this very existential crisis being a New Yorker... Like, why did these people die, and how is it fair that these people died, and what does it mean? You don't get over it, but it changes the way that you live and the way you treat people around you. A lot of you people know me because I am a public person. I haven't always been the best person, I haven't always been nice to people in my writing, I have kind of been a bit of a brawler in my life, and I have been reassessing that over the last couple of years and trying to be a better person, and better to other people.

Georgia: What will be your legacy?

Leo: Anne Lemotte wrote a book, "All New People". She said that every 100 years it's all new people. What that really reminded me of was that of course some of us go sooner than others, we are all gone sooner than later really. But what we have is remarkable is that we are all alive in this space. This was our cohort of people that we got to share the planet with. It includes people like him, like Goldie, like Steve Jobs, the people that we know around us. Some of us are going to go sooner than others, but really we are all in this cohort. This is our group, and in 100 years we are all going to be gone. So let's celebrate this cohort because we have lived with some amazing people in our group, our cohort.

Jason: And we have lived in an amazing time. I had this really deep conversation with my wife, and I was like, you know, all of the success, and I have lucked into so many great things in my life, what am I going to do with this last 10-20 years, or months, or weeks, or days? It's like, holy shit, I need to start really thinking about this.

Leo: It's not that long. Even if it's 40-50 years, it is long, but it goes by really quickly.

Georgia: The coolest thing I've ever learned was when I did therapy on a very expensive old folks home, so I was dealing with the movers and the shakers of the world, people who were multi-billionaires that ran huge companies. The one thing that I took from it was that they were on the last part of their life, and they didn't talk about their companies, or how much stuff they had, or how successful they were. All they said was 'I wish I could've spent it with those that I love for a little longer.'
---

And finally, I will end with an excerpt of a speech by Sam Harris:

I want to speak to you today about death. Most of us try our best not to think about death. But all of us knows that we're just a doctor's visit away from being starkly reminded of our own mortality. I'm sure many of you know somebody who has experienced this. You must know how uncanny it is to be thrown out of the normal course of your life, and just be given the full time job of not dying. The one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. It's not just they spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up by petty concerns... year after year when life was normal.

And this is a paradox of course, because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming? Don't you know that you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll ask, what was I thinking? You know this, and if you're like most people, you'll spend most of the time in your life, tacitly presuming you will live forever. It's like watching a bad movie for the fourth time. These things only make sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we're going waste our time like this. There ways to really live in the present moment. What is the alternative? It is always now. However much you may feel the need to plan for the future or mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound tripe, but it's the truth. And we spend most of our life repudiating it, overlooking it. The horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives. We're always anticipating what is coming next. We're always trying to solve a problem. It's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.