Thought of the Day #36: Pixel C

Worth it?

https://pixel.google.com/pixel-c/

The notion of getting this expensive tablet to use "free" (as in free price) services is ridiculous.
But it does have OTA android updates...

I'm going to run my old tablet to the ground before buying another.

Attitude to Life.

My attitude to life is summarized in this quote from Cloud Atlas.

Our lives are not our own. 

From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. 

And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

Meaning we are all tied to the universe, part of the universe. We are but waves in the sea. Beautiful, powerful, dynamic but fleeting nonetheless.

There is no self, no person. The self is one possible grouping that is socially useful. The self is only a way of thinking about ourselves. It's a mental shortcut. Not only this, we are locked into this mode/mould of thinking by our language - I, you, me, he, she, it.

It's all too obvious. The truth is hidden in plain sight. 

What are the consequences of this belief? 
I realize that at the cosmic scale, nothing matters. Humans tend to place meaning on everything, but in reality, meaning is in our heads only. And even if it is in our heads,  Meaning demands context. Out of a context, meaning disappears. 

I realize that we're all part of a system. We are but the system acting on itself. 

I realize that we do not see everything. We cannot see the whole truth, and that is what we have to live with.

I realize that I don't have free-will, but to live out my potential, I may have to acknowledge this and move on as best I can. In the moment, before I can compute the logic leading to my actions, my actions are spontaneous to me. This is the so-called free-will. So if an entity is capable of calculating my moves faster than I do, then in the eyes of that machine, I do not have free-will. But since I cannot predict my next action faster than I can decide and perform that next action, I can rightfully believe that I have free will. But this doesn't make it so, because a local truth is not necessarily a global truth. This may be what has been causing the confusion about "do we have free will?".

On the same note, therein lies a solution to the "Sleeping Beauty problem". Can SB rightly believe a "local result" to be the global truth, while knowing the global truth, and is capable of logically proving the global truth? My answer would be no. Often, there is no way of determining the truth with a single result. 

Perhaps there is one takeaway, and that is the universal truth may be "the real truth", but it's not the whole truth. The whole truth is that there is a universal truth independent of observer, observers may not be able to see this universal truth and a statement of truth doesn't exist without an observer.

Truth is not relative and not local. The very statement "truth is relative" is an attempt at declaring a universal, absolute truth.

...

So no. We are not free. But we are the products of local results. We are influenced by only a subset of reality/the universe. So it is our nature, and reasonable, to act as such. 

Trouble is, what is local wants to become global. And that sometimes comes at the cost of what is global.

That is why seeking truth and spreading truth are highly regarded. And why truth is ultimately preferable.

Life is its own meaning. It is what it is. And that's all there is to it.

Good day!

Thought of the Day #35 - Happiness, Animal Rights

Don't get too happy when stuff is going well,
Don't get too sad when stuff goes to hell.

-

I've recently caught the animal rights bug.
I have often found it distasteful to know that animals are killed and eaten at a massive scale, everyday.
It makes me wonder about the possibility of this happening to humans too.
So I'm sticking to veggies whenever it's not too troublesome.

Thought of the Day #34 - Part #1 & 2 - Ageing/Aging & #DeathToButtons

Is it aging, or ageing?

Spellcheck says ageing...just sounds weird.


-

I think someday, buttons should die.

For one, buttons are so freakin' artificial! The easiest way to know that I am in a digital, artificial environment is to look for the existence of buttons. I see buttons so much I wonder why nature doesn't have buttons.

Let's go natural.

#NoButtons

Personality Tests! -The Enneagram

OK, so I took the time to take an enneagram test. The results came back and it was pretty much what I expected.

Type 4. Essentially.

Also known as the Romantic, or the Individualist.

The basic fear of the Romantic matches my own.
4s are afraid that in a world where everything seems to have its place, that one either does not have an identity, or cannot be distinguished from others.
The most fundamental desire of a four is to find themselves and their significance.

If it's sounding all airy and vague, let's compare that to the others.

Type

1
Desire. To be right and good.
Fear. To be corrupt and defective.

2
Desire. To feel loved, worthy of love.
Fear. To be unloved. To be unworthy of love.

3
Desire. To feel valuable.
Fear. To be unworthy.

...

The enneagram system is based on the assumption that people are only driven by a limited number of identifiable desires, and that a fear is the opposite of what they want. The system implies that to grow, one needs to see the deficiencies of sticking to one type and learn to understand the strengths of other types and see the connection.

I find that whatever I do, I have a need to be different. I feel that I cannot just fulfill the requirements. When I'm not being different, I feel unfulfilled.

So now, a 4 has a choice. He can pursue uniqueness through creativity, going where others have never gone before, self-expression. Or he can accept his existence as part of the world and learn to feel and enjoy the connectedness, accepting the external structures.

4s are really complex and have incredible desire for identity and self-understanding.

There's much more than what I can write here.

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-works/#levels

How to create a personality test

1

Find a characteristic, preferably something compelling/useful.

2

Identify the possible (or common, when it's impossible) values that characteristic can take.

3

Find effects that characteristic may lead to.

Eg. if someone is shy, they may find it hard to make friends and hence have fewer friends.

4

Create test for it. Then help people interpret the meaning of the results.

Is the wealth inequality inevitable?

I've always wondered if the existence of an elite few is a natural given. 

This is not new news, but something I've always wondered about and intuitively thought to be true.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-freeland-idUSBRE95J0WL20130620

I think there are related assumptions that need to be addressed to understand why the situation is as it is now, and how it can be changed.

1. Existence and actions of the state doesn't play a role in causing this phenomenon.

Government is coercive. To add to that, we have lots of laws, legal barriers, patents and other things that won't exist without government. These things add cost to doing business and grant unfair advantages to certain players.

Technology has the capability to make society more self-regulatory, making government less necessary. The rise of the sharing economy with its peer reviews and feedback is one example. In the distant future, it may well be that the state would be completely replaced.

2. Money isn't really money anymore.

When money can be printed, spent and borrowed at astonishingly high rates, money is no longer an indicator of value. And if we can't even price money correctly, we cannot price anything with money correctly. Since pricing is the vital function of a market, it is possible that the entire economy is far more distorted than we think.

3. People are created equal. 

As far as we know, IQ is naturally a bell curve. Some people do certain things better than others. I believe that until this is disrupted and practically infinite human intelligence can be made freely available, possibly by artificial augmentation, search engine or AI, this will continue. 

4. The potential for automation to create far more wealth is only beginning to be realised.

This is a real game-changer. I think everybody is capable of critical and creative thinking, basic labour jobs really result in many people suppressing their mind's potential to cope. With automation comes the need for mass retraining and creative adaptation. 

Conclusion:

Total equality is impossible. But inequality may not be unchangeable. The degree of inequality can be changed.

I think we may eventually come to a point where this is not the case. 

Life is Short 2: Finding Direction.

This is a post full of ramblings from a guy who is selfishly trying to make sense of own direction and future.

I once went to one of those startup conferences, where they're all about the good vibes and can-do attitude. And in one of those Q&A sessions, I asked an experienced engineer, what he thought the meaning of life was.

He answered, like a true system architect/analyst, "Define your specifications for life".

-

You know what I like?

When I was 1, I really liked bashing things, flipping things over, crying and crawling. I did a lot of crying as a baby. Walking was not my strong suite.

When I was 2, I liked to walk, laugh and eat.

-

Space

I want to go to space. You know, just to see how big the universe is. Because I can never quite understand just how small I am relative to the universe, yet at the same time, be capable of observing it, and having it in my mind.

Vacations

I want to have vacations every 3 months, no matter how short they are.

Money.

I want to make enough to never have to work for income ever again. That's it.

-

OK, the above is getting complicated. Let's get a framework.

-

Food.

I want to eat out about half the time. The rest of the time, I want to cook or sit down with the family.
I will always prefer extreme spicy, because it excites my pleasure centers.

Career.

I'm quite sure I'll always want to do something related to tech.
The question will be "Tech Plus What?"

Air.

I demand that my air be fit to breathe indefinitely.

Death.

I intend to live to the average female life expectancy, which is about 90 or so.
Because males just live too short.

I intend to die well. Not old and toothless in bed, but at the height of some experience.

Sex.

I don't have goals here. I choose spontaneity.

Of course, sex for making more copies of my genes sounds awesome. All my little strands of DNA agree. I would also accept biotech alternatives.

Legacy.

Awfully gloomy here isn't it?

My ego would really like it if I cared, but I did a lot of soul searching and came to a unanimous conclusion...no. I don't care at all what happens after I die.



TBC...

Thought of the Day #33: Waking up in the mornings

When I grumble about how early I have to wake up (0745) everyday to get to work, I will remember how you guys are probably already up, out and working.

Bon nuit!

Thought of the Day #32

True happiness is not in taking, but giving.