Power of Productivity

New ideas, innovations, and inventions usually makes its visit while one is fully engaged in being productive. There are many different ways to be creative, to mold an idea, and to execute a project. When one is approaching a problem, one need to consider all the various ways to take care of the situation and then resolve to go with the solution that seems the best fit for the given premises. One need to be flexible when it comes to choosing a method, and while keeping the momentum going, take time to notice the pattern in which things have been going, and then to "sharpen the saw" for efficiency.

Magnetic Electrical World

I marvel at how our bodies are really a set of potential fields, releasing and holding off electrons from time to time in rhythm with our circadian and life force rhythms. If you really think about it, our bodies are liquid capacitors, channels of sodium and potassium, and somehow it all magically sets itself into a symphony of life, such that our heart rate becomes somewhat of a conductor of the orchestra. I love it. I love how our bodies work, and I enjoy thinking about all the processes. It's beautiful.

Statistics

Every individual human being carries a set of data, where each datum represents a little of the big picture of the world. The challenge in research is to find out (i) whether one factor really causes another factor to behave in a certain way, (ii) whether a combination of factors together causes the phenomena, (iii) whether that one factor causes a combination of changes in various factors, and so on. The causal relationships are hidden most of the time. Another challenge is getting the right amount of data in a way that is representative of the big picture.

There is a balance between an article that states an obvious fact and a research report that tells us something which was not evident before. Of course, we have to stay away from things that are way too foggy to define. For any of the statistics to shed light on one's knowledge of the world, one has to make pattern recognitions about the world based on the numbers.

We calibrate things, even qualitative things like color, so that we can measure everything in our minds.

That's the just the beginning of trying to find knowledge. One can always be wrong about something, and be humble to admit it.

Pattern Recognition

Human behaviors have patterns.

The atoms and molecules also behave in patterns.

Sometimes the pattern makes me believe that God exists. Other times I have to admit that I am like my computer, because I will never know who coded me, for if I do, I will no longer be the same again -- I will know how it all came about, and then I am no longer my kind (e.g. the computer will no longer be a computer if it recognizes just how complicated a human being is and which one of us is typing into itself).

So is there a way for a computer program to become intelligent enough to edit its own code? Only if the programmer anticipates a conditional instance that lead the program to follow another set of directions that direct the recursive editing of the code itself.

Computers do not recognize patterns. To recognize patterns is to do a multi-level decision process that is impossible to code in a binary linear model. To associate a pattern to a set of sensory inputs or dataset, the binary model cannot be linear, the model should be in layers or sheets of 1s and 0s (not lines of ones and zeros). To accomplish that, there needs to be a parallel system.

Notice what have changed and what have stayed the same. Then just follow the pattern to see where you'll end up.

That's how life dances. All of us flow with the pattern in one way or another. There is beauty in space-time in that time changes everything and space separates us from certain conditional instances. That makes life navigating easier.


I watched a couple of TED Talks today:
TEDTalks : A secular, scientific rebuttal to Rick Warren - Dan Dennett (2006) (video)
TEDTalks : An atheist's call to arms - Richard Dawkins (2002) (video)
We all write for one reason or another. I wonder why people write. What drives Richard Dawkins to write with such passion to prove no god influence humans and to urge humans to take freedom to engage in a new worldview on why we exist and what we can do? What drove Edith Wharton when she wrote about cousins who have twisted love lives? What motivates Dan Dennett to dream up downloading his mind onto computers and the material structure for the seat of the soul? Why this brain for this goal?

Spend time wisely. Sail through the warped sea of our sheet of time with great big dreams. Question whether these dreams are your own or whether you were given these dreams, and then accept them if the dreams fit. Have a goal oriented week!

Fragility of the Self

There are no guarantees in life, no rules that will completely protect one from difficult conditions - whether they be health, financial, career, educational, relational, child-rearing or natural disaster related. We are all vulnerable to time, predators, age, disease, and suffering that ultimately come before death. It is said that the most powerful moment is when a doctor tells a patient that he or she is going to die. The last thought of a patient is often mundane; in old age it is likely a thought about a bodily function. Sigh. When will I have a bowel movement again? Flat-liner.

I was listening to a USC podcast about modernity and whether it is our savior; and if it is not, then whether religion is the answer. I recognize that Sam Harris, Kevin Starr, Julia Sweeney, Jack Miles, and the man with a booger all have clear ideas that religion is surely not the answer; not by itself. To save ourselves, we really shouldn't count of one single person/place/thing to do so.  You can count on Jesus of Nazareth, but you still need to be active, and do your part along God's will and plans.  You also have to be very careful not to let tricky statements or questions lead you to step toward the wrong path.  It is important to try to reference truths with more than one source to cross-reference.  That's why the gospel is "synoptic" -- it has cross-references, and includes many of the same stories, often in the same time sequence, and similar wording.  Synoptic means "seen together."  It doesn't take a genius to realize Beowulf may have bullshitted his way to king-hood back in ancient Danish history.  Beowulf's tales of adventures are accounts with no witnesses, mainly because he sails out to unpopulated regions for his battles.  Whether science is truth, we are not totally sure, because science is not so exact either; in physics and math, humans have no choice but to use fudge factors and approximations. In statistics, humans can only be pretty sure of something without meaninglessly pointing to an obvious fact as the focal point of a study. When we pose a theory, we are not completely sure that the changes in A is related to the changes in B. We are only 95% to 99% sure that if-A-changes-then-B-changes-also. This means that the idea is not to be rejected as a possibility while acknowledging that there may be co-variates and other factors that make the variables A & B behave the way they do.  Scientific theories people considered as good as true at one point in time may not be valid in the future, because scientific theories get discarded when something disproves it or when something else fits better.  So in the same way, we are only kind of sure of the guarantees that claim to protect us. We are always vulnerable to being damaged. We can always hold a fear that what befalls on a fellow man might befall on us.  Great things are done by faith, even when done with as much analysis and as many facts as one can obtain.  With the limited sensory inputs we have, and with limited reasoning abilities, we make the choices with the best outcomes by faith, by a gut feeling, and by a hunch.  Humans do not have all the answers.

I am not at all sure that being a college graduate is the holy grail that grants a perfect life. There are more an a few people I know who have educated themselves to the point where a lot of degrees were gained, and yet have become a burden on themselves and their loved ones. There are those like Abe Lincoln who have never gone to college. And there are also a few Gates, Dells, Jobs, and entrepreneurial risk takers who have no affiliation to having finished the prescribed course work, and still made it to the very top of the 2% in terms of prestige, power, recognition and wealth. And I have met people who have gone insane for the grades that promises "the good life." While most people do okay, there are those who have gone downhill since graduation day.

It is good to recognize that we come into the world naked, vulnerable, and given no guarantees. Yet, we are also given a certain amount of time, a certain set of abilities, and a certain level of hunger to do whatever we are motivated to do. Our salvation may not come from a mass conversion, or a profit motive, or a religious conversion, or a good set of self interests alone; it will likely come from a combination of these things.

The holy grail(s) tend to read the many minds of each of all of the "self's" that exists, then reside at that location. The magic is to take ideas out of what is in the minds of large number of people. The key is to catalyze all these different people, for whatever their own personal reasons, to want a certain something (or want to do a certain something). We live in a world that houses a diverse set of people with a variety of world-views and outlooks and different needs. And the variety of people to have different desires that changes over time, but at some point those desires intersect -- in more ways than one -- and surely the holy grail(s) appears at the intersection(s). All those "self's" add up. I want a new computer. You want a new computer. I want eye glasses. You want eye glasses. I want to see a physician. You want to see a physician. Actually, one might really have a need to see a physician. We all want the same things in one form or another. Mathematically, that's like the intersection of all the multi-variable functions that represents all the dynamics living. For Gates, the intersection of the functions-of-needs lies at the point located in an OS called DOS from IBM. For Jobs, the intersection is in selling machines for everyday people that runs great software housed by cool hardware. For many other people, the intersection is in providing a product that people will buy or use over-and-over again. The intersection is an inescapable product/service/good of some sort. Doctors make money because each and everyone cannot escape unscathed without using the service they offer. The backbone of the marketplace is repetition of consumption.

The level of utility one gets from consuming a good is fragile. There is an ever moving set of locations for the holy grails.

So when I look in a mirror, I see another mirror because I am a mirror of those around me. I am part of society in an incremental way. The photons that hit my eyes shows me who I am, which is a reflection of photons bouncing off my surface onto the mirror's surface. Photons bounce off my surface, therefore I am reflecting like a mirror, but without a flat surface plane and without the properties of mercury or other types of metals. My being is a mirror. The mirror framing my face and my eyes play a game of catch with the mirror(s) facing me; the photons are the balls in the game of catch. My baseball mitts are my photon detectors. I infinitely look at myself. I reflect you reflecting me reflecting you...

That's fragility of the self in a nutshell. We are strong and fragile at the same time.

Have a great week!

I have feelings. Good for me!

There is a saying – God makes a way where there is no way – and I think that is true. The cosmos is larger than what we can incrementally measure. The vastness of space itself and its comparison to the most infinitesimal microscopic elements is virtually impossible to fathom mentally without the aid of adding machines. And yet, here we are, trying to piece together the puzzle of the universe with what limited sensory facilities we have. Assuming that God does exist, that the gravitational constant is really set by someone, and it is wisely set at this delicate optimal attractive force, and that there is somehow some kind of order to this world leads us to feel secured that the energy that makes us who we are will carry us to where we need to go. And yet, no one can answer all the questions. One of these questions would be “why allow suffering to exist?” Other thinkers I have read suggest that the lack of suffering and pain would lead us to become numb – an anesthetized state – equating an almost deathly existence. If one does not feel pain, then one will not be able to protect oneself from harming oneself. The reason why lepers break their fingers off is that they do not know how much force to exert to do day-to-day tasks. Their deformity is made by the lack of ability to feel pain. When you are numb, you do not know how much pressure to use to caress someone. When you are numb, the amount of push is not felt. You can break yourself over the long run if you cannot feel pain. Incisions are not felt at all. So back to the gravitational constant, or the molecular attraction based on the amount of mass of object A and object B. If object A consists of electrons that attract to object B’s proton, then there is a molecular bond. If both A and B are of the same charge, the two will keep their distances or bounce off in space, and yet, in an empty space like a vacuum, two masses of larger scale than the afore mentioned molecules are attracted to each other and will keep close. Now, if I press on a numb person’s skin with the molecules that make up my hand, at a certain point, the numb person will feel resistance and not pain, and I on the other hand will feel pain as well as the resistance. We leave traces of ourselves on each other. When I touch this keyboard, molecules of my skin, my sweat, and the microscopic traces of me is left on the machine, and yet at the same time, the machine leaves traces of itself on me. I can smell the rubber covering of the keyboard pad on my fingertips. I feel the dust of the machine on me. Perhaps that is how sexual acts binds persons together as well. And maybe, in the same way, the earth, so small a planet, leaves traces of itself on its neighbors. So if the energy that constitutes me shall fade, the law of conservation of energy will surely direct my being’s energy elsewhere. It is so bad to think that one day the use my molecular energy will be to fuel plant life, or to be expressed in heat, or light, or to whatever that follows? Using our own tangible, tactile and visible senses, the reality of the energy going elsewhere seems to be the fate of our energy. The vibrant order of the body’s metabolism, cognitive processes, and the regulatory electrical impulses will have a hundred percent chance of ceasing. The fear of this coming is not uncommon, and yet for it not to happen is grotesque, for what good is a decaying pulsing warn out body when compared to the renewal and the renaissance of birth? How easy it is to make life? And yet, how fragile is this life that it takes years to sustain it for a brief period outside the great big spinning ball that we call home? So perhaps God does make a way when there is no way, for look, we do live in a spinning ball, tilted on its axis to create the four seasons. We circle the large burning mass with enough repulsion and attraction. There. Voila.

Oh my God! I am caffeine sensitive! Our language and its uses are to be considered by anyone reading anything. Did I borrow too much here, Ludwig Wittgenstein? Was I using language in a special way? And then, may I ask -- who can use it right?

Question: Who is God?
Answer: That’s for each of us to find out for ourselves at our own risk. Good luck!

I know that I know nothing for sure

social constructs: your very being is a social agent.
opinions: everyone have an opinion.

facts: not everyone have all the facts.
theory: everyone with ideas have a theory.

truth: truth is hard to see.
science: the theory is not reality.

reality: the map is not the territory.
you: the self is a process, not a tangible static entity.