Turning leftist arguments around.

The left often claims that because the human systems are too complex today, it makes central planning NECESSARY.

Turn it on its head...

We can claim that because the human systems are too complex today, it makes central planning IMPOSSIBLE.

First final exams

The electrical engineering exam was pretty nasty compared to all the homework, midterm and past paper questions. The teaching group apparently believed that the past exams were too easy and decided to challenge us to see who knew their stuff best.
I knew my stuff, but I didn't always understand what I needed to do at that moment.

The CS exam was pretty easy, possibly too easy. I was expecting some programming challenges in there, but there was none, just a lot of program tracing. The teaching group were probably too happy when they made the exam.

I hope most people are like that.

Update:
My hypothesis came true. The mean of the CS exam was high and the standard deviation was huge. Grades really are going to be pointless.

wish there was a chat client that allowed...

having multiple conversations at once with the same person?

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is like memory leaks. The effort is on to expose government secrets concerning highly controversial issues so that the decision making processes the secrets are part of cannot be used, without compromising the processes. The goal is by impeding those processes, the conspiracies and its processes will run inefficiently and openly, such that everyone can understand and deal with them.

The impact of the leaks appears to be minor, despite the publicity. There remains the need for more leakers for the effort to succeed, and much more press emphasis.

The government response would be to reduce leaks, coverage of the leak's contents and attempting to contain the leaks and the damage they do. They may also decide to move ahead faster with their plans.

At the end of the day, it is up to society as a whole to react appropriately to the leaks, because no amount of secret information and press can change anything on its own.

Careless Mistakes.

Careless mistakes are defined as unexpected, unintentional and simple to make errors.

Careless mistakes don't matter as much as we think because we are always capable of them, we will always make them, we cannot prevent ourselves entirely from making them, and in the long run we'll unavoidably make plenty.

Without careless mistakes, I would have got perfect scores every single time. I have concluded that careless mistakes are random errors that reduce precision, but never accuracy. They still follow an approximated normal distribution. Accuracy always matters far more than precision (both matter but not the same), and if it isn't, it just means you need a better algorithm/computer to do the arithmetic or calculations.

Careless mistakes are the most intelligent bugs there are. While they may disappear from a certain piece of code, they can always hide in you. They run away or teleport away when you detect them, but there's always somewhere they would hide. We should not be annoyed at them, but instead calibrate accordingly. We should always allow ourselves the time to calibrate for them (also called testing and debugging), instead of forcing ourselves as human beings into situations without chance of correction.

The smarter you are, the smarter your bugs are. But it is always possible to remove bugs from a particular piece of code because we always tend to know what we want the program to do, but we can never quite pin down EXACTLY what we want, because we are not exactly defined ourselves.

What's the maximum number of computations that can be done on a certain piece of data?

Roommate conversations

Recently, my dorm was refuge to a few guys who had been locked out by their respective roommates because they brought home their girlfriend. That's happening in the middle of mid-terms week and has been devastating to their studies.

So don't forget to talk to your roommate about laying down some ground rules of bringing girlfriends in. Things like giving advanced notice, evacuation timezone and setting the time period they get their room to themselves.

However unlikely you or your roommate think that is, unexpected occurrences can have lasting impacts on the roommate relationship.

Elements of a good student society

Market demand estimation
Individual dedication of members
- decreases with time and then levels off.
Must not interfere with studies.
Must somehow appear to help with studies. (CAS hours, or mentoring, or studies related activities)
Must be engaging. Interactive. Dynamic. Ever-fresh. Unique.
- people must look forward to its events, and not be so low in priority that people think it's a stump in their calendar.
Understand the demand of its members.
Must be aware of competition
- people only have limited time and budgets to use on societies.
Must have organizer type manager-geniuses (at least 1).

People need to actually like to be in the club, and not there for their CVs, or for the social network. Otherwise, even if the club has a huge budget (eg. Student Union) and manpower, they cannot fulfill their target market.

Copies do not exist.

Copyrights are very interesting stuff, until one realizes that for many copyrighted items, there is no perfect copy. Every version based on a previous one is different physically and from an information point of view. So there is no such thing as copying, just producing a seemingly-similar object based on the first, original object.

Of course, there are things which can be copied identically, like program code on a computer. Those things can be copyrighted pretty fine.

The scholar's stone.

---
In HKUST, there is a concrete block right in the middle of the path of the path between the dorm and the academic building. It's called the scholar's stone. Student-myths claim if a student steps on it, he would either fail at his studies or become dean-listed (in direct translation, this also means crazy listed).
While I'm not one for the superstitious beliefs, I believe that it was a special rock because it was a bump in the road.
Either way though, I thought it was beyond the boundaries of conventional standards. I thought if I failed at something, that wouldn't be a bad thing, and if I did brilliantly, then that was something special too.

//
"In the society where mediocrity is too often a standard and too often rewarded, there is intense fascination with men who detest mediocrity who refuse to define themselves in conventional terms and who seek to transcend traditionally recognized human capabilities."
Not-my-quote//

University life chapter 1: the beginning adjustment period

It's been a great long while since I blogged anything, so let's get up to date on what I've been up to.

I've chosen to go to HKUST, because of its relative seclusion, a rather academic feel, as well as its optimum distance from home (2 hours away, fairly direct transportation), so as to achieve balance between family life, academic life and social life. I felt it was impossible to do so if I studied abroad.

I moved in on the 30th August, soon after the halls were open to local freshmen moving in. It was pretty chaotic then, though everyone was pretty friendly and welcoming. I was told by year 2s and 3s that hall 3 is known for its warm atmosphere... probably because this hall has an interesting location... it is the furthest from the academic buildings and library.
The inhabitants of this hall hate rain. It stops us from going home without getting rather soaked. As I am writing this, rain is pouring from the clouds above and fog has engulfed the place. Thunder booms from left and right with the loud ssshhh of rain.

People here get together in a lot of hall culture. Fast food is the norm, as are a host of other unhealthy habits, such as the development of habits such as sleeping very late and then waking up very late. I feel I am just at another stage of life whenever that happens. Sometimes I think I am too young for that, and sometimes I feel I am too mature for that.

Thankfully, there is a lot of diversity in this hall, so we just live. At least for now. Floor committees are to be formed tomorrow. I guess that would bring us all together too.

My roommate is pretty awesome. He like to sleep very late. He's decided to bring in some coffee to cope with the late-nighters-for-random-reasons. He loves playing music in the room, which seems to help me relax and sleep.
He's pretty thoughtful. He gave me a blanket when he saw I wasn't in my sleeping bag at night. He wanted to share bananas because they go bad pretty fast and it wasn't easy to finish them fast enough.

Black Holes

1. I take back what I said about that the singularity being limited in size. However, It could reach a limit.

2. I reckon it is possible to avoid gravitational singularity by pretending that things don't fall in at the same speed or at the same time.

3. Black holes should therefore emit gravitational waves, even though my understanding is not sufficient to show that they exist.

4. If they emit gravitational waves, then this is another energy exit for black holes, other than hawking radiation.

5. Hawking radiation is hardly going to decay those black holes anytime soon. Cosmic background radiation absorbed is typically more than what is emitted.

Mutual Assured Destruction Debate Continued

If the players were really sane, mutual assured destruction would not be considered a reasonable option. It's not even war. It's a "crime against humanity" many orders of ridiculous magnitude worse than all previous cases combined. You cannot assume all players to be sane in this world, because as even economists realized, people are not sane, nor are groups of people. The point of "mutual assured destruction" is not actually to win a war. It is to murder as many human beings as possible, while safe in a deep silo somewhere. Nuclear submarines don't do all that much except for launching more nuclear weapons. The side that destroys more capabilities wins, and it's not going to be equal at all. So everyone is destroyed, but some are more destroyed than others and that's important.

Mutual Assured Destruction

- is beneficial for politicians. It fosters nationalism, raises defense budget spending and maximum death. Politicians have a high chance of survival due to their huge bunkers with supplies to last indefinitely.

- makes no sense whatsoever for all civilians. They pay for weapons to be used to destroy other civilians and escalate nuclear war. The strategy does not pay off for them either.

- makes no sense for the military. Mutual Assured Destruction does not win wars, strategically or tactically.

- does not happen in real life. The destruction of population centers and nuclear weapon facilities will not prevent nuclear retaliation or conventional retaliation, or reduce resistance. One side will emerge with the upper hand.

- is not assuring at all. Killing billions of people does not make the world safer.

It is dangerous to be intelligent beyond a certain degree

What degree do you think?

Graduated comment

Those noobies don't know how to help people express their opinions. 

"Moderators" are there to stop people from using persistent personal attacks each other or preventing people from voicing their opinions. That is all. If they wanna attack moderators, I direct them to anger management training. I don't ban them or anything, except if other users want us to.

In the case of a school forum, the "moderators" now have to stop people from using persistent "personal" (or even just direct criticism) attack against the school. 

The issue is that everyone represents one interest. No one is neutral at all which means no one is a true moderator. So any hostility or strong criticism directed at the school or "student council" is always interpreted as attack on the students running the forum.

Moderators must not be there to censor anything. The most one does is sort the discussions into nice categories. 

If the place is censored, then on a free net, users will move away and use other means to voice opinion. Unfortunately, the elitists can't be bothered to read other stuff for a multitude of reasons, and so some things are never heard.

Let's just say that people don't have to use the forum if they don't want to. You wanna do some serious complaining? Go write to SCMP and have them post you major school complaints on their young post. 

Or if you hate this school, go somewhere else. It's your education, your choices and your parent's money after all.

How does a good moderator deal with complaints? You let them keep talking, and you improve. Of course I'm assuming you run most of the stuff. 

South island claims that it is "educating the international leaders of tomorrow"(TRADEMARK). It can be observed without doubt that they are also educating the international little tyrants of tomorrow.

My view of "learning futures" is that while its goals are relatively noble, it is not something a school can teach. Hence, a waste of time. Today's kids should be good enough to learn it themselves. 

ICT on the other hand, is rather useful, even though I don't think kids attached to their laptops need that. 

PSE helps too, who knows when you need to use that sex education.

I don't see how students are questioning what they were taught. It's the kind of criticism students throw when they feel they didn't need to learn something. Well, you do. I reckon most guys can't successfully use any of the contraceptive devices without being taught how to. 

"Senior students" love to think they are like mentors, when in reality, all they ever were are a bunch of crooked elitists who give a poor impression that they know what they are talking about. 

In the real world, "The way I moderate is none of your concern, stay on topic and be constructive or do not bother to post." makes you an asshole. Moderators are by default evil. 

Finally, the main issue with this forum concept is simply that there is no place to discuss exactly how the forum is run. If this is done, the forum becomes much more useful and peaceful for everyone. 

Government healthcare

It's obvious that in a government healthcare system, patients are no more than things that need to be processed and gotten rid of, one way or another, so that the rest of the patients can be benefited. In reality, no one get the benefit, because the same procedure is applied to everyone, and there is no incentive to use resources in more effective ways to help people. It is also a monopoly.  

"Euthanasia" is the newest convenient way to get rid of patients. 

Insane

Technically, we are all insane.

What do you think?

Avatar: Continued

Na'vis ==> Nazis

That was a seriously interesting connection that doesn't start to make sense until I went further to compare them. 

There is really a lot more to the movie than one sees first. I wander what those other million people who saw it will say when they find this out!

mock exams, for the records.

I would almost prefer the rest of Year 13 to be just mock exams, because 

it make the day so much simpler, 

the bag lighter, 

the homework load zero,

and stress reduced because 

I actually sleep better (except for the first and last days) at night, 

even though I may sleep considerably less. 

However, I would definitely have preferred if everything was pushed back to 2009, because the exams did cast a great big shadow over the last days of what should be my holiday and worse, the beginning of the year 2010.

Looking back to Year 12, I saw that most of the stress then was justified as being "preparation for Year 13". However, it didn't really live up to its purpose. 

Teachers did not set realistic questions for tests and exams, so when the exams came, it makes me feel rather helpless, as I have not encountered that question before in recent memory. 

Time consuming things like Essays and those pesky knowledge theory lessons no one really wants to do were taking too much time. Since the ib and most ib students are so hung up on learning outcomes, the correct way to handle the ib would be to go through the learning outcomes very rapidly so as to avoid boring people and turning them off. The same goes for the essays. Actually go through everything so it is not a trial-and-error process of many redrafts. 

Doing the above will then allow most coursework and assessment to be completed early in Year 13, therefore saving about a week and half to deal with mock exams. The proof that this works can be clearly observed by looking at what the most fanatical ib students do, compared to the rest of the grade. 

There is a lot of untapped potential for the ib program in South Island school, but the planning is not exactly effective in getting this out. It is definitely realistic to say that there is a lot more to do in the ib compared to a-levels or local hk exams, and hence ib students will always be more busy than their counterparts. 

However, the sooner in year 12 people realize just how hot hell can be, the better off they will be later. For better or for worse (I say for worse), ib is a high pressure, relentless system that the parents and students chose to do and that's the way to play the game. 

Avatar Blues

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

That is very interesting. We'll have more depressed people running around saying that Earth is destroyed, and that we aren't doing enough to stop it.

But that's not the main issue. The main thing is that there is much more in this movie than we currently see.