Matrix Problem, Snobby Food, and Death

Matrix Problem

The Matrix Problem is a classical example of an unfalsifiable thesis. What if this world isn't real and is simply a simulation? We have no way of knowing until we are unplugged and freed. Sure, it's a possibility but there is no evidence to suggest it. It's meaningless even if the very nature of the idea implies it cannot be provenm... that this is a simulation, means we won't be able to to prove it with any sort of data because we are inside it. The same logic can be applied to any god claim. For example, the very idea of a god necessitates that it is undetectable, hence the idea of a personal god is given with no evidence whatsoever. That's not good enough. I can make an infinite number of claims of this sort.

Snobby Food

I've been perusing videos on Youtube about some fancy food, including the Fat Duck, a very expensive restaurant that employs molecular gastronomy. Some people... many people feel the urge to troll it because it's not cooking in as strict sense as frying potatoes.  People think it's snobby food, that you'd leave hungry. Do you really think a restaurant would survive if its customers left hungry? Think about it for a second, ok? Snobby, overpriced? So is the Mona Lisa and like every single famous painting, ever. Or any expensive precious stone, or expensive computer or car or house or whatever. What is the difference? OH YEAH! You don't care about food as much. So others are snobby elitists who have no life and are pretentious fools because they have different interests than you do? Or is it because food doesn't last forever? In that case, so does sex, movies, and life. Doesn't render pursuing those useless.

Death
These ideas are plucked straight from Sam Harris. But think about it. You will be no more distressed after you die than the billions of years before you were born.

'Most of us do our best not to think about death. But there’s always part of our minds that knows this can’t go on forever. Part of us always knows that we’re just a doctor’s visit away, or a phone call away, from being starkly reminded with the fact of our own mortality, or of those closest to us. Now, I’m sure many of you in this room have experienced this in some form; you must know how uncanny it is to suddenly be thrown out of the normal course of your life and just be given the full time job of not dying, or of caring for someone who is... But the one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time, when life was normal. And it’s not just what they did with their time — it’s not just that 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 in petty concerns, year after year, when life was normal. 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 there’s going to come a day when you’ll be sick, or someone close to you will die, and you will look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention, and you’ll think ‘What was I doing?’. You know this, and yet if you’re like most people, you’ll spend most of your time in life tacitly presuming you’ll live forever. Like, watching a bad movie for the fourth time, or bickering with your spouse. These things only make sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we’re going to waste our time like this.
There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound trite... but it's the truth... As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the human mind. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it. Fleeing it. Overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives.

Whatever you can possibly notice in your body, mind or world has only one place to appear: in your conscious experience. I'm not saying this is all just a dream, but as a neurological matter it is like a dream. It is dream that is constrained by inputs from the external world and the dreams we call dreams we call dreams at night are dreams that are not constrained by the external world. That's why you seem to get away with everything. But you mind is all you have. It is all you ever had. It is all you have to offer other people. And this might sound callus to say when there are many other aspects of your life that seems in need of  being addressed when you're struggle to find a career or you're sick, but it's still true. If you are perpetually  angry and depressed and confused and unloving, it doesn't matter how much success or who is in your life, you're not going to enjoy any of it. I suspect we could all make a list of things we want to accomplish, things that really need to be changed in your life. What is the significance of everything on that list? Each thing on that list seems to promise that if you could only do it, you would have reason just to be happy in the present moment. We are all trying to find a path back to the present moment and good enough reason just to be happy here.'

Favorite Poems

First I'll post the poems I wrote then I'll post my favorite poems.

It is currently finals week and I'm busy. I'll post some new content after all is said and done.

3/20/12

These are two poems I wrote in tribute to The Things They Carried, one of my favorite books of all time. I talk about Jimmy Cross, a naive platoon leader unable to withstand the responsibility of being in charge of the lives of his men. He continues to think about a girl despite unrequited love and a man dies while he does, and now he is overwhelmed by guilt. Got inspired earlier today to overachieve on the poems.

I Needed Fixing

Forever ago

Before I knew

I signed up for this war

Forever ago

When life was easy

Before life got hard

I signed up for this war

Now I sit in my foxhole

Forever alone

Encumbered by the weight of men’s lives

Feeling the gravity of war

Feeling the immense guilt of wanting

When you lose something you cannot replace

When you love someone but it goes to waste

I tremble

Wrested, pried from my hands

The innocence lost

The blood shed senseless

There is no hope,

No love,

No catharsis;

You hold the in your hands the two halves of my heart

The void that exists

Nobody can replace it

Not her, nor God, nor all of the treasures of the world

Once upon a time,

I didn’t try

The world was in my hands

The stars were an arm’s reach

The moon, the galaxies, the space too

Now I sleep alone

Just the jungle, the earth, the rest of Nam

Desolate, solitary, forever alone
This is the end

When you try so hard but you don’t succeed

The tears roll down your cheek

When the light at the end of the tunnel is a mirage

The tears stream down your face

A million words will not bring you back

I know, because I tried

Neither would a million tears

I know, because I’ve cried

It’s hard to forget

Somebody that gave you so much to remember

A smile can happen in a flash

But the memory of it can last a lifetime

There is no catharsis

There is no hope;

I tried so hard but life gets so heavy

What else is there to do?

I cry, I mourn, and I die

Goodbye.

Fix You

Jimmy,

Every day I sit outside

I look at the sea

Where the tide meets the rocks

And the seagulls come out to play

I look at the trees

Where the wind blows ever so slightly

And the raven sits on the nest just like so

The other day I walked along the sandy beaches

I found a pebble and it made me think of you

I want to love you

I want you to be happy

But as much as you can’t stop loving me

I cannot love you

I don’t imagine you beside me

Not next to the seagulls or the raven

Nor next to the trees or the beach

When you try your best but you don’t succeed

Maybe it wasn't meant to be

It scarred you but it broke me;
Wounds can be bandaged
But the mind is not as resilient

Everyday
When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep

I stay awake

Staring at the ceiling

I am so sorry Jimmy

I don’t imagine you next to me

I want to love you, but I can’t

Stuck in reverse

Find someone else, Jimmy

If you don’t try you will never look

If you don’t look you will never find

If you never find you will never live

It takes a man to hold on

But it takes a better man to let go

Come home, Jimmy

It’s time

The lights will guide you

And I will find a way

To fix you.

===

My favorite poems:

Heraclitus

They told me Heraclitus; they told me you were dead.

They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed.

I wept when I remembered how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;

For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

-

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

-

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

 -

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

 -

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

 -

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

-

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone. 

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. 

Favorite Quotes

For me to like a quote, the quote needs to be new to me. It needs to bring something more to the table than a simple 'feel good' or simple statement. 50 quotes of 'Be all you can be' and leaving at that won't fly because I'm not getting anything out of it.

It is currently finals week and I'm busy. I'll post some new content after all is said and done.

Dreams

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." -Oscar Wilde 

Character/Life

"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

"Debating with a person of inferior logic is like playing chess with a chicken. It doesn't matter how good you are at chess, the chicken will just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like it won."

People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel. 

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” ― John Lennon

"Play fair. Don’t hit people. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. "

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.” - Albert Einstein

"Faith is the surrender of mind and reason. It is the surrendering of anything that makes us different from any other animal. It's our yearning to believe without evidence, to discard all of our logic and reason and to put all of our trust into somebody that is the most sinister virtue." -Chirstopher Hitchens

"Unless life also gives you water and sugar, your lemonade’s going to suck."

"Think of the haters in your life as sandpaper; they’ll scratch you up time and time again but in the end you’re polished and spotless while they end up useless."

"You're generally not a bad person, but you're a victim. You're a victim of the system which infected your mind. An idea is like a virus, extremely resilient, highly virulent. But until you fix yourself, you're part of the problem." -Eric Lin

"Be confident even if you are not. If you screw up, so what?" - Eric Lin

"You can wait for the storm to pass by or you can dance in the rain. The choice is yours." - Eric Lin

"Power tends to corrupt; Absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Action

"When in doubt, don't. " -Benjamin Franklin

"Relationships are like houses. When a light bulb breaks, you don't throw away the house. You fix it."

"I am not upset that you lied to me. I am upset that I can no longer trust you."

"How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." - Oscar Wilde

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” - Dr Seuss

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt". - Abraham Lincoln

"Trust is like paper. Once you crumple it, it can't be perfect again." 

“No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” -Sigmund Freud

"Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know." -Louisa May Alcott

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Time heals all wounds, but it leaves a scar and renders one unfeeling. A few get infected and die, but most survive. Not stronger, just more cautious." - Eric Lin

“Life becomes precious and more special to us when we look for the little everyday miracles and get excited about the privileges of simply being human.” - Time Hansel

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” ― Oscar Wilde

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ― Douglas Adams

"You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth." - William W. Purkey

“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.”  - John Green

"The freedom which we're all such big fans of evaporates when our preconceived notions are challenged" - Hope Alexander"

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.” ― John Green

"Hurt me with the truth, but don't satisfy me with a lie."

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let us down, probably will. You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts. You'll fight with your best friend or maybe even fall in love with them, and you'll cry because time is flying by. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt. Life comes with no guarantees, no time outs, no second chances. you just have to live life to the fullest, tell someone what they mean to you and tell someone off, speak out, dance in the pouring rain, hold someone's hand, comfort a friend, fall asleep watching the sun come up, stay up late, be a flirt, and smile until your face hurts. 

“I am intrigued by the smile upon your face, and the sadness within your eyes.” ― Jeremy Aldana

"...But we don't get a second chance; we regret, remember, and continue to live our mediocre lives..." - Me

Happiness

“When things go wrong, don't go with them.” - Elvis Presley

"If you see a friend without a smile, give him one of yours."

“It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.”

Intelligence

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish based on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." - Albert Einstein

"Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.” ― Ester Buchholz

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. -Albert Einstein

"Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise." -William Shakespeare

Love

"For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, what could have been." - John Greenleaf Whittier

"I don't know whether to smile because we are friends or to cry because that is all we will ever be."

"Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice but falling in love with you was beyond my control."

"A smile happens in a flash, but the memory of it can last a lifetime."

"A million words wouldn't bring you back, I know, because I've tried. Neither would a million tears. I know, because I've cried."

"I gave up not because I didn't care, but because you never did."

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.” ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

"Also, I have to disagree about the "High school relationships mean nothing" part. Every relationship means something. They shape you as a person, as a lover, and as a partner. They're important for your emotional development as much as the next thing and mature you as a person. Relationships matter in all ages, because love is the same in all ages (As are lust and infatuations of course). " - Nazgul Killer

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same."

"Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never knew."

 "You know you are in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. Seuss

"True love stories never have endings." - Richard Bach

"Sometimes your nearness takes my breath away; and all the things I want to say can find no voice. Then, in silence, I can only hope my eyes will speak my heart." - Robert Sexton

"As much as I can't force you to love me, I can't force myself to stop loving you."

"I dropped a tear in the ocean. Whenever they find it, I will stop loving you."

"To be your friend was all I ever wanted; to be your lover was all I ever dreamed." - Valerie Lombardo

"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever." -Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell." -Joan Crawford

"I only thought of you once today. I never stopped." 

"Don't cry because it is over; smile because it happened."

"Bad excuses are worse than none."

"Somewhere there's someone who dreams of your smile, and finds in your presence that life is worth while, so when you are lonely, remember it's true: Somebody, somewhere is thinking of you."

Success

"A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits." -Richard M. Nixon

"I have also noticed that when a rider who had confidence in his ability was defeated, after doing his level best to win, always received an ovation from the gathering." -Major Taylor

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." -Mark Twain 

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretsky

Mortality

"Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls."

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”  John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”  -John Green

Fun Quotes

"How to be $500 Richer at Prom Night" by Skip It out on Barnes and Nobles, trending now. ;) Hehe. Haters gonna hate." -Eric Lin

"Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery." - Erma Bombeck

"Once upon a time there was a statue. It stood in the same place since the beginning of time. This made the statue very lonely, except the statue wasn't lonely. This is because statues don't have feelings." -Ryan Minoc

"Roses are red. Violets are blue. No mutual friends, who the hell are you?"

"Vote for Obama, because you are voting for Blackhood and Black Rights and Gay Rights and Rights in general and just the Bill of Rights with the Ten Commandments of Rights and the Rights of mankind, and of Womanhood." - Eric Lin

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." 

"Girls are from Venus and men are from Mars. We're both too lazy to walk to each other so we settle for Earth. True story." -Eric Lin

"I'm in favor of it as long as it's multiple choice." -Kurt Rambis, on drug testing

Other

"Nobody is perfect. I am nobody."

"Everybody is special. Just like everybody."

"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?" -Mark Twain

"Tell a lie. Make it big, and make it clear. Repeat it over and over and eventually people will believe it." - Joseph Goebbels

"She locked away a secret, deep inside herself, something she once knew to be true... but chose to forget. " - Cobb, Inception

"An idea is like a virus. Very resilient, highly contagious." - Cobb, Inception

"Don't you want to take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone!" - Saito, Inception

Religion Deconstructed Second Version

Hey people of the interwebs,

After a lot of work (and over 75 typos and lots of new content and whatnot) later, the second edition of the book, Religion Deconstructed is finally out. I won't be making a new version any time soon, so rest assured the book won't be "obsolete" tomorrow. I've deleted the old post on the first version of the book. It has an updated cover too. :) As I said the first time, all of my old religion blog posts are obsolete because this book covers all of that and then some.

https://www.facebook.com/EricLin0/posts/10200709713219633

The link above features a post with a link to download the book for free. It's in a 7z archive with PDF and Docx archive. The other link inside that link takes you to the Lulu page where the book is published. The physical copy costs $7.50 to print so I don't expect any orders except from me. :)

Brain Droppings

Well hello there, my non-existent audience. Sorry for my long hiatus as I'm sure you're all aware. Welcome to my brain droppings blog post, where I list random thoughts I've had during my time away. A few may already be covered in my second edition of my book, which is currently unreleased.

Friendship Over Logic?
It makes no sense to me that friends back each other up even when they obviously wronged another person. 'Because he's my friend' means 'because I refuse to think rationally and wish to side with the person that would return the most benefit from my allegiance'. It's putting personal gain and feelings ahead of what is morally correct. Say there are three friends, A, B, and C. A and B get into a fight because B does something that is objectively positively immoral. Person C refuses to take sides, saying how being neutral is good. Person C is being very irrational and selfish. This is because person C doesn't give a rat's ass about what is right or wrong, only what allows him to have more friends, which basically means he is taking the highway which gives him the most benefit. What is moral and immoral is none of his concern.

'To decide to do nothing is itself a policy and a decision.' -Christopher Hitchens

Teaching Creationism
Teach intelligent design in schools to represent 'both' opinions? Storks carrying babies is not a competing school of thought for where babies come from in medical school. We shouldn't teach both and we shouldn't equate both. To do so is to imply there are two truths or that each are equally valid. Because sometimes in science there is only one right answer.

Challenging Beliefs
We are told to respect other's beliefs on the origination of our species. But when was the last time you heard somebody ask you to please respect their beliefs in chemistry or geography? If I believed China was in middle of USA, you are under no obligation to respect me for it and it would do me well if you set me straight.

Speech and Debate?
I'm not too keen on speech and debate. You're put to a side without knowing what side you're going to be on. It's about who argues best. But I debate to try to figure out what is true. You can take your time to gather your thoughts without fear of a clock.

Meditation: Irrational?
There is nothing inherently irrational about meditation, not that I partake in it. But it stands to reason blocking out the external noise from our hectic day-to-day lives, from being bombarded with stimulus, may improve our state of mind. A bit of a time out. It's not bullshit until one starts bringing in "being one with the universe" or "unlocking transcendental energy" that it starts to become bullshit. That's my opinion, anyways.

Ad Hominems:
The validity of my arguments have nothing to do with whether I'm being nice or rude to you.

Regarding Fox Hysteria Over Boston Bombings:
Great job, Fox. In over-reacting to the Boston Bombing, you called it an attack on our constitution, freedom, and way of life. Then you quickly brand the suspect as an enemy combatant and terrorist in order to forgo our Miranda rights. He's not a terrorist, he's just crazy. But if he were, you lost because um... the point of terrorism is to instil terror.

Progress of Science:
A single human lifetime ago, the world was considered to be only one eternal, static galaxy that has been around forever, surrounded by eternal empty space. Do you know how amazing this is and how far we've come?

I am Not Amazing:
Now, you may have a different opinion on my intelligence, and that's fine, but it's quite curious why you, the reader, would bother reading this if you thought I was an idiot. If I refer to my intelligence as if I had above-average intelligence, it is not to be arrogant. It is to calmly and rationally refer to something I believe I've recognized and you are allowed to disagree with. Because let's face it. Every single smart person in the world had to say they are not smart, just 'average', then who the hell are the smart people? That's right, the ignorant, dumb people who think they are all amazing. Humbleness is good, but realism is also good.

And intelligence doesn't really measure my success. In fact, the very opposite could occur. Despite my perceived 'intelligence', a dumb person could easily beat me in terms of knowledge and professional success simply by trying harder. Trying harder often outweighs any extra intelligence another person may have. Once we get into college, things change and people cannot simply ace classes based on intelligence and erudition alone.

But take heart. I'm smart? Compared to what? The average population? I don't even know what the intelligence level of the average population necessarily is. And how do I easily test for intelligence instead of knowledge? But what I do know is this: There is so much to learn in this world. The amount stands to make all I know turn into nothingness in comparison. This is not bullshit I say so I sound humble, and since knowing the extent of your own ignorance, I ironically become seen as wiser. No, it's more than that. We have experts in this world for a reason. We are a specialized society, where each person masters their craft. I find there to be an intrinsic noble-ness in trying to master your craft. But even in the field of science-no, narrow it down-physics, cosmology, black holes, say. There is too much to learn. We don't even know what we don't know. And yet, these leading experts know so much. In researching about the Big Bang theory, I went across Wikipedia. The information there is overwhelming. Just the general ideas is amazing and complex, let alone the calculations (which is where the hard part actually is). If I knew so much, we wouldn't need these experts.

Y U Hatin'?
I had some person criticize me for apparently not knowing something, where I promptly got downvoted on Youtube followed by snide comments about my 'American education'. Here is my response:

"Don't get me started on American education bullshit. We're still amazing if not leading college and higher because we still have the most prestigious schools in this country. We still attract the brightest minds here. We still make more 'things' than China in terms of value, but only due to quality, not quantity. Now if you're going to piss on us because our high school and middle school education sucks, then you're obligated to piss on the education of all the countries below us. Lots of 'education' is about knowledge, not intelligence, so don't put my intelligence on the line, either. But let's forget all that. Let's ignore all the educated people and look at the uneducated people when you're doing our comparisons. And ALL our youth knows OBVIOUSLY only and solely comes from school, right? Our attitudes towards school ONLY and SOLELY comes from school, right? Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to consider what you think is ignorance on a specific matter the result of a horrible educational system?

Are you hating on something because it's popular to hate it or because you actually have good reason to? Is this like Walmart, where everybody hates it but shop there anyway? Or are you simply prejudiced against those who happen to be born in America or had their families move there?

With matters of religion, I am considered strident, intolerant, and prejudiced if I simply ask a question with no strings attached. Yet people find it socially acceptable to question my fundamental ability to process information. This does not contribute to a discussion, this is a one-dimensional insult. But most of all, I hope you're more educated and better in every way that matters compared to the people you so openly and easily insult without further investigation, as if one comment which YOU perceive as ignorant defines my ENTIRE capability."

Predictable Irrationality

I've already talked a bit about love and first sight; how we are fooled into loving a fantasy we've invented in our heads of another person we just met. I've also gone on about how 'being yourself' is quite impossible in a sense. But what about our ability to decide things?

Statistics show that countries which have the lowest donor rate have only one vital difference between countries with near 100% donor rates, and it's not a matter of culture for the most part; countries nearby with similar cultures have drastically diferent rates. What it all came down to was the way the DMV form was written. In countries with very low rates, the form said 'check here if you want to join the organ donor program' and the countries with higher rates said 'check here if you do not want to join the organ donor program'. Our decisions came down to how the form was written. In this sense, our decision was completely in the control of the form author. How in control of your decisions do you think you really are?

If our brains were evolved with the occipital lobe to process vision, which we do more of than almost anything else in a day, and we are prone to optical illusions, how horribly must be fail things we were not evolved to do, like making financial decisions? Look at an optical illusion, even with the foresight that this is an illusion, yet your brain cannot see past it. Yet with many of our day-to-day decisions, we do not have a specialized part of the brain governing and dedicating to it, neither do we practice making financial decisions hours each day. It stands to reason that we are prone to making many more mistakes with financial decisions... and without an easy way to see them. With an optical illusion, you can easily see where you went wrong, perhaps by measuring the length of a part of the picture. No so with many other issues we have.

Yet, we go about our day-to-day lives as if we are the absolute decisions maker, when the DMV form designer possess powers over us. We feel we are generally rational yet we commit to fallacies, if not in this aspect, then another aspect of our lives. We are partitioned in our way of thinking.

Here's another interesting study result. This one was given to physicians. Suppose your patient has a hip problem and all medications you've tried didn't work, and following that the natural course of action is a hip replacement surgery. What would you do, if the day before the surgery, you found out you missed on medication? The majority of the doctors ended up halting the operation, which is good. But what happens if you found out you missed two medications? A much higher percentage of doctors simply let the surgery occur. It seems counter-intuitive; missing two medications means a higher chance of success. But the extra burden of decisions and choices we still have to make drives us into inaction. It goes back to my previous blog posts about participation and choices. Jobs with the most employee programs have the lowest participation rates.

Another study was done regarding choices. Suppose you had three choices: To go to Paris or Rome, both with free food and all expenses paid, or you could go to Rome, but you still have to pay for your own coffee. Quite simply put, the last option is useless as far as a rational brain is concerned. But the fact that there is a Rome option with coffee paid, the study finds out, actually pushes people to pick the Rome option.

Here's something a bit unrelated but also about our mental states. You would figure that being offered a higher incentive led to higher success. After all, who doesn't want a big commission? As studies show (and this has been replicated many times for decades), yes, that is indeed true, but only for problems with typically one solution and an obvious road of attack. If the problem requires a creative approach with critical thinking, a higher incentive actually decreases our performance because the higher incentive led to the participants being more near-sighted. it stifles creativity. This must be taken into account in a business, because business and many problems of today are not simple one-answer and done problems, like washing the dishes. The Wright brothers beat the heavy favorites of their time, who were funded and offered tons of money. Wikipedia beat out all other contenders, one notable one from Microsoft who hired proffessors to write articles. Wikipedia offered nothing to its participants. So it seems the ability to do what you want and master it to be part of something larger than yourself is a driving force. A huge chunk of what comes out from Google comes from sessions where employees were given time to work on any project they wanted. A similar approach is employed in Bethesda, who makes the Elder Scrolls series, most notably Skyrim.

Oversimplification, Love at First Sight, Some are More, and More

I thas been a while since my last post, but it also took me a while to write an entire book, which by the way, I plan on revising in the future. I might get around to editing old Minute Logic posts and fixing typos. Anyways, let's get to it!

Some are More
I think in the golden age where everybody gets a trophy for trying, too much emphasis is being placed on making people feel better about themselves. If one can get a ribbon in a contest for not even following the rules, isn't that A) Misleading and B) causing people to be complacent? It's very easy for me to get lost in my own thinking and think of myself as quite intelligent. In fact, the intelligent people are in MIT, studying god-knows-what. They don't have time to blog about their thoughts. Not only are the intelligent, they show amazing persistence. On the other hand, I'm quite undisciplined. Sad face. Some people are literally 'more'. Their life is worth more, their thoughts are generally superior, and their entire existence is of a greater magnitude than some other. People like swallowing this idea, that each person has 'inner beauty' or some other hooey. I think that's false, and the tendency to follow that statement up with 'therefore, each person is priceless' is dangerous. It's complete bullshit.  Some people contribute more to society and are in a better position to fix problems and strengthen humanity. They will know more than we ever will. To huamnity at-large and as it should be for us, these people are better.

Yes, human life is worth something, but we play a numbers game with lives all the time. As I type this, some few children would have died in misery and suffering that could have most likely been preventable. We take this kind of stuff into account every time we design vehicles and anything safety related; sure, it has a chance of saving lives, but we don't want to spend all that money. We weight the cost of the implementation to the cost of the lives saved. I could give away all my money to those who need it more than me, those that would die if I didn't. But I don't. We are all selfish; it is in our nature to not be completely selfless, because you would be the idiot that died more than a hundred-thousand years ago. We cling onto family because it provided a plus to our survivability. We hate incest because it denies gene diversity. So as I've probably stated in an ealier blog post: After evolution and culture, how much left of yourself is truly yourself? The answer is much less than you'd think. No, I do not think we are all zombies of our nature and enviroment, but it has a much larger role than many of us give credit for. When chemicals rush into our brains right before sexual intercourse, we act just like the animals we actually are, as many other organisms in this world do.

Simplification
In major issues, people sometimes like to try to simplify it into one line. Every 'atheism destroyed in 60 seconds video' I see, I lose an eye. (Not literally, or I'd be blind.) Why? This subject is too ocmplex to address in 60 seconds. This reverse also applies; 'religion destroyed in 60 seconds' is pretty dumb, but not as dumb. 'Guns don't people, people kill people.' That's stupid. The most it does is verify your stance on gun control. It's not an actual argument. By that logic, all countries, North Korea included, should be allowed to have a handful of atomic weapons... heck, give random people some too. When the rule of allowing people to bear arms was written, people had muskets. We now have assault weapons with extended magazines to kill more before reloading- a critical factor in killing more people.I'm a bit neutral on the topic of gun control. More people are killed by many causes compared to guns, but the fact that the many victims in gun shootings would have been alive if it were not for guns is unmistakable. I mean, seriously. No, you can't arm teachers. Even trained police officers have a hard time shooting, and they are trained; they hit, accoridng to Time magazine, about 1/5 shots in the heat of combat. Speaking of which, I have a friend that thinks he's all fancy with his purple belt and can beat people up. Riiiight. Come a real fight, you'll turn to putty. The psychological factor is HUGE.

Love at First Sight
I'm a bit cynical on this stuff. But I no longer believe in this kind of stuff. How does one 'love' somebody for who they are before they know them? it's a bit of a non-sequitur. Instead, and as Dean Lyson pointed out, all we are doing is loving the person we've constructed in our minds, of who we assume they are. It is essentially falling in love with a constructed image of a person, a random guess at who they are. We want to believe the world is a nice place despite and because the world is such a cruel place. We want to believe the world has a god watching over us and we will survive if we die. We want to believe we can tell or destinies through our stars. We also want to believe there is that somebody that is utterly perfect for us. The idea of 'soul mates' is complete gargbage. It's based on assumptions for which there is no evidence. While there could potentially, through a sliver of chance, be only one person I will be extremely happy with, chances are there are many people in the world that I would be just as happy with if I had met them... but the world is huge, and I won't meet them. So when you see a 'soul mate', consider how this is faith-based proposition and had you lived somewhere else, you would most likely have found another 'soul mate'.

Settling is Condescending
I'm not the ultimate lady's man, and I openly admit it. I don't want to go into detail online, especially with my face and name attached to it, but I'm not crying over it. But one temptation others may have in my situation is to 'settle for somebody'. That is unfair to the girl. Imagine if you were married, and you found out your partner really only picked you because he or she couldn't find anybody better that liked him or her back. How would you feel? I think even to myself, settling for myself would be condescending to myself. I deserve and should find somebody I feel i am fully compatible with, who thinks I'm amazing. To settle is to judge myself unworthy.

The Truth
If I live under a dogma, the dogma would be that of telling the truth. I don't always tell the truth, but I do it to my friends often when it would annoy them. But in all cases I feel if I were perfectly moral by my own standards, I'd tell the truth. I feel the truth is always preferable to the non-truth. I don't want to live in a fantasy world, removed from reality. To complain when asked an opininon and I told the truth is to be angry somebody took your whiskey away after your obvious addiction. Ask me if you look fat in the jeans, ideally I'd reply, yes. But you know what? I'd notify you of the problem before you embarrass yourself in public, AND I'll help you find a pair that makes you look sexy. So looked at in this light, is it really that bad I try to tell the truth?

Aging: A disease?
One different spin on something that has been around us ever since our sentience: death and aging. Putting aside the psychological and philosophical aspects of this right now, isn't aging a disease? Is dying of 'natural' causes not so natural? Consider aging as a deterioration of our bodies, and our body unable to keep up. As we grow when we were little, we repair faster than the rate which we deterioate, but as time passes, things change. Errors in our DNA occur, and general misinformation along with clutter and garbage appear everywhere.

One argument may be that it is due to our evolution that we die too quickly (on the scale of the universe and even compared to some other animals on this planet, we die in the blink of an eye). If evolution could talk, it would literally look at us and say 'thr trouble of making you alive any longer is too much'. But if we consider that natural, isn't dying to many other diseases also natural?

Sigmund Freud said it was obvious religions were made because we were scared of death. Perhaps the media casts living longer in a negative light. Imagine if Newton and Einstein were alive today. Amazing. The world would be a different place. Would living longer only mean we live in a statement of sickness for a longer period of time? One person on TedTalks responded that his goal is to make people healthy, then make them healthier for a longer period of time, and perhaps one day make them always healthy.

Morality: The Lion
Isn't it more immoral for a lion to kill tons of animals than for a human to scam another person? Morality is a subjective topic because even if we condense morality into what brings the most pleasure (even that is debatable), who is to say what makes more happiness in the end? Anyways, a lion that kills somebody has no choice. The lion does not have the mental capacity we do, and will starve. Us, on the other hand, are given a better mind, and knowledge is power, and with great power comes great responsibility.

My Book
One last note, and this time about my book. I plan on revising it. Try proofreading an entire book that you wrote. When proofreading, often e read what we think we wrote, not what we actually wrote. It's challenging. I want to fix all typos that exist in this version, and beef up the book with even more good content. Perhaps as Hitchens said, I will be writing this book my entire life.