the clog

shapes and numbers again

I played around with my scripts for fractals some more, and then I got bored with the details, started searching for what other people have done. here's a very nice little program: fraqtive.

very simple formulas can generate very complicated stuff. and I've just learned that they have been giving tablets to apes, I wonder why they shouldn't show them a bunch of fractals as well. I find it perfectly possible for them to handle some math better than ourselves, we just have to find the adequate language.

I wonder what math will look like in fifty years...

Jim and Joe again

I've continued Jim and Joe into something that might grow up to be a story. Here it is. I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons licence... if people find it good enough that they think I should write for a living, they'll probably let me know.

automated fractals

fractals again. I made a python script to better handle the generation of fractals. what I said before about seriously freezing a machine stays valid... anyway, this should be usable to make high quality animations (as series of bmp) or something like that. note that you should be able to implement your own complicated color schemes if you'd like, just follow my example for a rainbow (used in this picture).

have fun.

cracks in reality

I wanted to show you this picture too.

It's interesting to call it a picture. If you have a digital camera, you point it at something, you click it, and out comes a jpeg file (or whatever). this is a png file, but I can turn it into a jpg if I want to. The support is identical, but the information is fundamentally different. What I have here is a picture of a pure concept. But it is real. I think I was trying to say something deep and interesting, but I don't think it came out right.

Anyway. I might just like to look at this picture.

how to write bitmaps

I updated this cpp file that generates nice bitmaps. it should compile with g++... if not, the basic idea is pretty simple. Be careful, if you give it the right parameters for a 1core 1CPU machine, this code can seriously freeze it (well, heat it in fact. I don't know if it can actually burn the CPU though). If you're not sure what I'm talking about, it's best not to use it. Just say no, and install xaos if you really want to play with fractals.

I'm just realizing what a handicap it must be not to have a command line.

In case you are wondering, this particular picture is of the Julia fractal corresponding to the Misiurewicz point $c = -.77568377+.13646737\imath$.

new moon

sort of...

I've always said it can't really get any newer than this. I was lucky with the sunrise, got to take pictures without a filter. Here's a later view (longer exposure, I wanted to see the tower):

This guy's picture, much cooler.

numbers

hello there.

I've had this idea for some time now, and I took advantage of it being my birthday to justify playing with it. the idea is that if you have sets of natural numbers, you can encode them in a fractional (real) binary number. the nth digit is 1 if the number n is in the set, and 0 if it isn't.

if you do this with the prime numbers, you get (approximately) 0.41468250985111166... after looking around a bit, I found that there's this smart man Simon Plouffe, who made a website Plouffe's inverter, where he has a database of real numbers. I also wanted to see what numbers I got if I looked at pi/4, and I found this page with a binary expansion of pi/4.

it's a bit sad when you get an idea and you see someone else had it before, but that's the way it is. anyway, here are some more of these numbers: 0.6349187201195740649... (lucky numbers; didn't even know until today that there was such a thing as lucky numbers), 0.7656250596... (factorials), 0.9102787972... (Fibonacci).

from the way they're constructed, it's easy to realize if these numbers are rational or not. I wonder what can be said about whether they're transcendental or algebraic. I'm also curious if the distribution of digits in binary notation is related to the distribution of digits in decimal notation.

one thing to note is that this kind of correspondence (real betwen 0 and 1) <-> (set of natural numbers) is not a bijection. because you can write the same real number in two ways (0.1 = 0.0111111... in binary). however, there are at most two sets of natural numbers that correspond to a rational number, and that's it.

another interesting thing is that this can be used to define a distance between functions defined on the natural numbers. if v(A) is the number corresponding to the set A of natural numbers, then v({n|f_1(n) not equal to f_2(n)}) is a distance between the functions f_1 and f_2. It has all the properties of a distance, even though it might be a bit weird that d(n, n+1)>d(n, n^2).

anyway, end of transmission.

Jim and Joe

When I got home, I sat myself down to start writing. It was raining outside.

I had to write it down. I had to get it through somehow.

I got up and called him, and I said “Joe, I gotta write this book.”

“I know, Jim. You told me.”

“I gotta make it understandable.”

“Yes.”

“I have to understand it.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“It's two in the morning. We were talking about this, and we went home because it was two in the morning..”

“I'm sorry. . . but do you understand I have to write this?”

“Yes. But I'm going to sleep now, Jim.”

And he hung up.

‘And it's gotta be complicated. I mean complex. No, I mean elaborate. No, I mean interesting. Interesting, because if it's not interesting people will stop reading. I hate people. I have this thing to talk about. I have the world to talk about. Dam it, only quantum physics and it's enough to never understand, but that's only the beginning. And people only care for interesting things.’

So I stood at the window and looked at the rain. ‘Do I hate people? I might just despise them. I hate it when I get angry about this. Hating it makes me angry too. Quite the predicament. I like the word predicament. I should use it in the book; it's funny somehow. Why do people think some words are funnier than others?’

It wasn't that dark outside. It was dark, it was raining, but the lights of the city were lighting the clouds. ‘I wonder if the clouds contribute to the electricity bill. If I think about it, they do bring water and people are fond of water. Yeah. I should also use fond of when referring to something vital. It's so easy to think of funny things sometimes. Too bad I can't do it while talking. I should be grateful I don't write like I talk. how I talk? I have to write this.’

A car passed through the rain. ‘splash splash. Maybe words are funny because we use them in funny situations. Leave it to me to state the obvious.’ I sat down. I like to watch the ceiling from time to time. ‘It has a certain finality. No. whiteness. whiteness is stupid. not finality. great writer, can't find a stupid word for an obvious feeling. wholeness. yeah. deffinitely. deffinitely maybe. where the hell did I hear that?’ Writing can be a very personal experience. ‘Reading should be personal too. How the hell are people gonna get any more personal than reading? It's just two people. the writer and the reader. nobody can get between them. well unless there's more than one writer. and the stupid reader's listening to music while reading. damned e-readers. but no. it's personal. it's gotta be personal. but I can't put myself out there. I'm a horrible person. no. I'm just boring. I'd like to be horrible. what would that be like? but I am boring. I can't put myself in the book, the book will be boring.’ I sat up again. The rain had quieted down. I could make out the water dripping from high places. I always feel that that is the end of the rain. Once I can make out water dripping through the rain, the rain seems kind of pointless to me. I mean, if I were to walk through the rain, the dripping would be the part I disliked. ‘not dislike. avoid? no. yes. something.’

‘I have to write this.’ “damn.” ‘dam beavers making dams. I like that letter. The world is big. and it's beautiful. and I hate that I'm so corny. I can't possibly write that. Look, people. Math is not only not boring, it shows how pretty everything is. Nobody listens. Nobody reads 'till the end. too bad nobody's making fonts from naked ladies. . . . rule 34? I wonder what it would be like to try to write thoughts. Not with naked lady fonts. that would probably sell well. write thoughts. when I can't even make them out before they're done. or something like that. and thinking is a dialogue. people do like dialogue. but if you take one person's thoughts and make it into a dialogue between several people, they're implicitly fake and empty. maybe most people are. nope, not true.’

For a story to be readable, it needs structure. More than that, it needs a purpose. I guess I wasn't truly sure about the purpose, so I couldn't write. ‘It never ends. Thinking about it. It has to be a dialogue, because I'm talking about the world. Everything I know is a dialogue, even if there's just one person talking. Maybe there's something wrong with me. I can't think in terms of actions, only discussions.’

‘What the hell am I doing? I can't do this. I hate books that have no story. I need a story. But there is no story. The world just is. No story. How can I tell a story about actual levels of reality? I hate the Matrix people, ruining it like that.’

I sat down again. Head in my hands, staring at the table. ‘I really like writing. Maybe that's my problem. I like writing, I like that when I write other thinking beings don't get in the way and I can fool myself into thinking I'm coherent. Maybe I just like writing, but I don't really have something to say. But I do like writing. The sound of the pen on paper. The letters forming. I love writing on paper. With a good pen. The smell of the ink. impractical. can't move it around easily, can't send it to Joe, can't. . . but I do like writing on paper.’

I got my pen and some paper. ‘I do like to write. . . there's that blue line. just a blue line, curling away. not curling. not flowing. something away. the blue line, making letters, making words. it's thicker in places, thinner in other places. it can end abruptly, it can end in a long thinning curl. dots here and there. the blue meaning. letters, words, but meaning. the whole world, there in the line on paper. white paper. final paper. not final, whole. and blue lines, filling the whole.’ Meanings don't have colors.

Most meanings don't have colors. We don't think of them in terms of colors. Except for meanings of colors. Most likely, we are not explicitely aware of thinking of the colors of meanings. But it's natural to think of meanings as colors. Mixing. Making up the world.

There IS no story to the world. There are truths. I think, therefore I am. Reality is there in the meanings. Somewhere. ‘I have to write about this.’ Our minds work with meanings, but meanings are just colors and shadows in reality. Reality just is. It doesn't ask, it doesn't reason.

Like it or not, once you throw the dice, you can't tell what numbers you'll get. Reality is particularly funny that way. ‘I have to make them understand.’ You know when you're in school, and you have a test, and you'd like to go through the book once more. Reality gives you that. You have everything it has. And still you can't get the result. Quantum physics is a nice theory. You can check that it works. There's no reason for it to work. It's just the simplest thing we've got that works. Not that it's that simple. And quantum physics says that if you have certain objects, you get atoms and you get chemistry. And you can see that there's biology built with that chemistry. How the hell do you get from atoms to biology? Worst than the dice thing. Reality is all there, but you can't put the pieces together.

Why did I want to put the pieces together? It's not a problem. People go on. Not putting the stupid pieces together, they still go on. And it doesn't make sense. They don't know where they are. They can't prove reality is real. There is some reality, that's obvious. But the pen, the paper, the ink. The flowing ink. The meaning. Is it real?

People should know this. I had to write it down. I had to make them understand. You throw the dice. You have your atoms. You have your chemistry, your biology. ok, let's make it simple. Assume these are objective. People. . . are they meaning, are they the sum of their parts? Are the meanings real?

something dies. the body is still there. It is it, but it is not it. It's easy to see why religions get so much money. The mind works with meanings. The meanings aren't all objective. What's objective about classical physics, except that it's a good approximation? But an approximation is not exact. And the meanings. The people. They need to know. They're not real.

discrete math

you gotta love it.

bifurcation diagrams

I doubt it's the first time someone found this result because it was too easy, but it is a nice result anyway. and it's also a nice example of using C through Python. not to forget, chaos and fractals are always fun.

science and religion

if you think about it, some forms of religion are a scientific undertaking. these people believe that the life we observe is just a first level of understanding, and that there are things outside of our perception. gods, that watch us, and judge us. there is no way to prove or disprove this assumption, so we can't call them stupid for believing this. their gods are just as possible, scientifically, as the true god (which we all know is the Flying Spaghetti Monster).

once you start from the assumption that life, as we observe it, is an illusion, and we are part of a bigger something, than you have to start wondering how you may prove or disprove it. at first, the tendency is to say that this is impossible to prove. but then, we have death. when one of us dies, something does change in the world. here was a system that received information and reacted to it in a unique (as far as we can tell) way. if there are gods in an underlying reality, they might be interested in keeping that mind functioning, even if the body we could perceive is gone. so there might be life after death.

so the first experiment we can make is to see if there are ghosts. but that doesn't really work, because if we can perceive and measure ghosts (even though there is no systematic proof that we can at least do this), than they are no longer outside our world. so... I don't know, maybe these people with religions split the world into ``the obvious world'' and the ``hidden world'', which is in fact not hidden, but it's just not obvious. anyway... ghosts would be manifestations of people that are dead. modern science teaches us that there are many explanations for the many forms of ghosts that have been observed throughout human history. the biggest problem is obviously the fact that scientists are generally busy with other problems, and there is no world-wide systematic study of ghosts.

another experiment is related to dreams. most of us have experienced dreams. more or less, depends on the individual. any child, when first realizing that dreams are related to ``real life'' in a different (and much weaker) way than today and tomorrow, will most likely think that they are still some form of reality. you know. just like when you take the car to get it fixed, someone goes inside it, moving things around, changing a few things and such, and then you still get the car, and it works, and it's generally the same car. how hard would it be to imagine that's what's happening to the mind when we're dreaming? in fact, that's most likely a very close explanation of what's happening, but, as far as I know, we don't need an underlying reality to explain it. the problem is that the science of a working brain is still far from being complete, so it's difficult to give reasonable explanation for every form of dream that can be experienced. so, dreams are still considered by some as a life in another world.

and there are also visions. these are only a form of dream, substance induced or not, so I won't be treating them any different.

there are two possible connections with the supposed ``supernatural'' (reality that is not obvious): speak to gods or ghosts while you're awake, or interpret dreams. obviously, once you believe that there is an underlying reality, then there's absolutely no reason to suppose that ``wake life'' is any more real than dreams. so there are consistency problems...

anyway, back to the science. people assume there is something more. they have access to this information that seems unrelated to everyday life, and they assume that it is meaningful, and can give hints about gods and such. and then you have people systematically interpreting dreams, and systematically trying to contact the dead. and you have systematic retelling of dreams, and schools of thought, and so on.

it's still an attempt at understanding the world. and society is paying for it. there should be no problem about it.

but there are problems. in today's world, there are plenty of people trying to understand the universe, and going about it the wrong way. our experience has taught us that if we want to understand something, we need to follow the scientific method. however, in organized religion, because of the intimate nature of experiments (dreams), people tend to be very biased. and you get things like prophets, who pretend that their visions are ``truer'' than those of common people. and these prophets write books, and proclaim that these books and only these books contain the truth. obviously, if a manufacturer pretends that he knows everything and sells you something that doesn't work, you go to take your money back, and afterwards you go to someone else. so manufacturers are forced to use the scientific method, and they generate the scientific movement because they need objectives rules of reality. in religion, there is no easy proof or disproof for the claims of a prophet, so everybody buys the books of the most charismatic prophet. it also helps a lot if the prophet has a few friends who pretend to be healed by him or similar.

whenever there is the possibility of great riches involved, thieves will try to steal. just like in science, where people fake results so that they can get funding, in religion people will fake. but in science other people can make experiments and prove fakes, whereas it's a lot easier in religion, because we can't truly understand dreams yet.

ideally, any rational being should be aware that if a statement is not falsifiable, than both possibilities are just as likely to be true. just like in quantum physics, where the truth is that the notion of ``position of a particle'' is improper: we say that the particle can be in one place or another, with some probability. it is just as improper to state ``there is no god'' as ``there is/are god/gods''. personally, I find it silly to assume that someone else's dreams are worth more than my own when it comes to measuring reality, but that's my choice.

any rational being, when faced with a question that can't have a reasonable answer, should not concern themselves with this answer. however, when dealing with the idea of ``life after death'', it's hard to convince yourself not to think about it. hell, I call myself a scientist and a rational being, and here I am thinking about it. history is full of strange phenomena. there are many things that we can't explain, pure and simple. and yes, I think it's worth looking into. but before that, we should solve the hunger problem. and world peace. because we know we can do these two, and we shouldn't waste resources. people like to rely on religion because they escape responsibility. god did it, I couldn't help it. god made me the way I am. and so on.

and yes, I have just presented my ideas, and I would benefit if people took them seriously, just like prophets and priests benefit because people take them seriously.

play

I made these tiny programs to write bmp files. And I made these tiny programs to write Julia fractals or standard maps to bmp files. Maybe someone can have fun with them.

The truth is that most of these tiny programs are kind of useless for others. Those who can understand and use them can write their own, and others... well I don't really have the time for documenting stuff like this. By the way, if you mess up your computer because of my code, it's not my fault. you have to compile it and run it, so it's understood you know what it does.

It kind of destroys the entire point, to have to put a disclaimer on what you do. Well, it helps to be an asshole about everything; stupid people get offended easily, so calling stupid people stupid people is kind of a firewall for stupid people. I'm beginning to feel related to Eric Cartman. It's strange, how today's sue-happy society can make me go from fractals and dynamic systems to a rant about stupid people.

anyway, have fun changing your background. In gnome, I set it as a bmp file, and if I overwrite that file it updates automatically. so I can make a script to change the background each 10 minutes or something; but remember that computationally expensive programs will heat up your laptop.

questioning the purpose

And so we can move on to ... whatever. I have the purpose I choose to have. I consider myself an intelligent being, so I make my choices after thinking about how they fit with my various purposes. Again the snake eating its tail.

By the way: there are a number of images that can be found throughout our history. pretty powerful images. There are also a number of ``systems'' trying to describe the universe and man's place in it. Some of these systems have survived for a very long time, and are still relevant today, even though they seem silly. Acupuncture is based on a bunch of nice stories that can be found lacking in scientific rigour. But it works; ok, the studies into whether it works or not are a tad inconclusive, but I felt it work on me, placebo or not. At some point I thought that maybe some of these old philosophies are close to some truth because some truths do tend to be simple. Simple in the sense that natural laws tend to fit into some basic math (like the whole group thing).

What we can understand about the world around us is not that much. I'm only saying this because of the way I live. I have a computer. I've been using a personal computer for more than 10 years. Before that, I had TV. I've been reading books ever since I learned how to read (not that early, don't worry). But before that, I used to sit on the ground and watch the stars, imagining stuff about the planets spinning around them (no, no planets outside the solar system had been discovered then). The life I think is built around my imagination and my friends, and the life I think is mostly the life I live --- this is one of the reasons I consider myself lucky. I control my imagination, and I have a say in the interaction with my friends. Most of my feelings are related to things that I or my friends control. I understand a bit about my imagination, and I understand a bit about the people around me; through talking to myself and to everyoune else I can further this understanding, and I can more easily do stuff that leads to happy fluffy feelings. That's the point.

Once I have something that depends on the outside world, things get complicated. I know some physics; humanity as a whole knows a lot of physics and engineering, and still I have to work for food and shelter. I have no control over the universe. In my imagination, if I start building models of something, I can go back when I make mistakes, but in the real world I can't cross the street unless I'm sure no cars are going to hit me. At some point, I offended people because of things I said; I didn't really want to offend them, so I would have liked to undo it, but they didn't want to (stupid people). The universe is out of my control, and there are people that are not my friends (so they won't have infinite patience with me). That makes it a difficult environment.

And I can say that BECAUSE I have access to the ``inner'' world. If I couldn't speak, the inner world would be much much simpler, and the outer world much much more relevant. I would be much better prepared to live with the unknown.

I say and I feel that I don't understand the world because I have a much better understanding of certain pieces of the world. I would like to understand, and I want to understand. In fact, I think it is my right to understand. My purpose. My duty? and that's where everything goes back to the snake eating its own tail, like the image of the snake eating its own tail.

What I want: is it what I want, or is it what outside influences have educated me into wanting? If I do want it, then why should I care? Is my subcounscious educated too, or will it start ripping my sanity appart when I don't do what it wants? When I was younger, I did have a period when I thought there was some inconsistency between what I wanted and what the other me-s wanted.

I wonder if some future employer will read this one day.

By the way: this is probably one of the most frustratingly interesting things about our minds: I am talking about me talking about me talking about me talking about me. Thinking is all about bluring the line between language and metalanguage: the model becomes real. My friends are persons, even though I know they're a bunch of atoms. And sometimes when I think too hard, I grab my head without really realizing it. And I close my eyes to get away from space (and sometimes time); I wonder if I do it because three dimensions are too much or too restrictive.

I don't think I want to understand. Not all of me. I'd like to not work but still get food and shelter. I know I want that. All of me.

Hm.

Dear future employer: If I am applying for a job, I will work; we both know I don't want to work, but I want to eat more than I don't want to work, so don't worry. If you're still not convinced, you can tell me this is the reason you're not hiring me; I won't hold it against you. I think.

questioning the supernatural

Yes, I need to be more specific.

Humans have their senses, and they can perceive the universe with their help. We cannot directly perceive radio waves, so to someone who doesn't know what they are, walkie-talkies are supernatural (beyond what they know is nature).

It doesn't make sense to ask ourselves if there is anything outside the reach of our senses. If we cannot sense it, than our lives cannot be affected by it; if our lives were affected, then we can sense it. It's not just about logic. For the longest part of our history, lightning seemed more like something thrown than like something fallen; in fact, if you throw something you give it kinetic energy when it has low potential energy, and when something falls it turns it's potential energy into kinetic energy --- with lightning, charged particles are "falling" because of the electric potential. But then we understood what causes it, and we can recreate it; no god is needed to explain lightning.

And even if there are gods that can do things we cannot (yet) understand. The fact remains that there are thinking beings that cause certain things to happen intentionally, so they CAN tell which is the cause and which is the effect. Maybe us humans can't grasp the cause even if we can sense the effect, but that does not mean that the universe as a whole is inconsistent. Rather, we cannot perceive the universe as inconsistent, because by construction we can't ever claim to have all available information, or a way to turn that information into actual understanding; so far, most inconsistencies were solved as just poor understanding.

If we perceive something, we can say it is the effect of some cause. That is the way we think, that is the way we interpret the universe, and it doesn't take much to make up a model of the universe that can always incorporate new observations. I have the feeling I'm not being very clear.

We can't tell if this is a simulation or the real thing. We can't tell if there is a god or not. We can't tell if there is "life after death". What we can do is compute possibilities of certain scenarios. But we can't be sure of what is beyond our perceptions, so the safest thing is to keep an open mind. The human being didn't need to know about special relativity in order to prosper, so we don't readily accept it. But the fact remains that humanity accepts these counterintuitive theories, and uses them, and prospers further because of it.

It's an interesting animal, humanity. Various individiuals can be remarkably stupid, yet we still make fun stuff. How will humanity's view of the universe change over time? That is food for thought. We went from primates to writing blogs... on second thought, our evolution is not really that exciting.

There remain the issues of aliens, ghosts and other apparitions. The fact remains that if the technology to simulate thinking beings can be created, then the possibility of living in a simulation is exactly 1 (additionally, the possibility that we may never know "how deep the rabbit whole goes" is also 1). There's a lot to think about, and no easy way to test these things. Once you realize that you may be just a simulated neural net in training, the entire concept of a world just outside of the obvious takes on a whole new meaning.

What we can do is take what we have, and deal with it. We cannot know the nature of the universe, in an absolute sense. But we can know some of the boundary between what we can know and what we cannot know, and that can help; we should start with that.

to be or not to be coherent

I've thought about this before.

thoughts come and go, and they come back the same. more or less. when I write, I try to keep everything simple; I try to only make chains where any two adjacent thoughts have something in common, and then turn that into words. or something like that. and I also try to keep a background idea, where I come back in the end, with a deeper understanding.

but it doesn't always work that way. and you have to ask yourself: are you trying to transmit an idea, or are you trying to describe yourself? sometimes these two get mixed up, and you don't really know where the idea ends, because it's something that's been on your mind eversince you can remember, and it might be an idea or it might be you. and sometimes ideas can't get properly translated into words, and the alternative is to allow the others to follow your thoughts, which is kind of the same as knowing you.

I can always find the link between two of my thoughts. someone once told me that I think coherently, because I can't truly get lost in my own thoughts (and they said they didn't think like this). I sometimes noticed that people thought I made paradoxical connections... it's easy if that's what you're aiming for.

on the other hand, if I sit back and think about it, it pays to not be coherent, because you can surprise people into paying attention when you're actually saying something that matters. but that only happens if it seems that you're not coherent when in fact the entire speech is designed. and if I don't design it then it looks like a demonstration, because it's a sequence of "if then else". and because.

writing thoughts in the order that they come can sometimes lead to incoherent writings, but only to the reader. and here you can take off and think about coherence being a matter of consensus. but writing as you think is more sincere in a way, because it allows people to see how you arrange your thoughts.

or you can jump ideas because you want to get people interested, and not bore them with the details (is this the way bore is spelled?). the point of understanding one another is to be able to attack problems with more brains.

i like brains. they can keep a mind occupied.

understanding is the ability to make correct analogies between the object you're trying to analyse and an inner model. and sometimes you can't see the whole thing; and that's when it pays to have more people work on the problem.

it took me a while to understand that there is no reason for some happenings. I happen to exist, but there is no reason for it, even if there are causes. and there are many people trying to find reasons where there are none, or despairing because there are no reasons, when there are no reasons to despair. and that's one reason to try to make them understand some of my understandings: I would be better off if there would be less wasted resources.

there is no reason to be or not to be coherent. there might be reasons for being or not being understood or understandable. I think.

everything

yes, I want to know everything.

I want to know why who when, not necessarily in that order. I want to understand. I want to be able to understand. I want to be able to prove that I can understand. I wonder what I'll lose in the next "I want"...

quantum physics is an important part of our everyday lives (you can't see without it). but it's an interesting exercise to figure out exactly how much we understand about quantum physics. of course, when you start questioning how much you understand something, you have to be very specific about what you understand by "understand".

and, as far as I know, that's philosophy. always realising that the last thing you said needs to be made more specific. thereby creating new words when you want to convey new complicated meanings. and turning the entire thing into a word measuring contest.

one of my (many) points is that I am here, and I think I understand several things, and I think I am not alone. so there is something here. the advantage of people making movies like "Dark City", "The Matrix" and "Inception" is that they can go home afterwards, and continue with the moviestar life. but i succeeded in fooling myself that it matters to know, and now i would really like to know. for instance... if I am young enough to hope that by my old age I'll be able to copy myself into a machine, how can I know if I'm the machine learning what is being copied, or If I'm just evolving into the old man? My mind is doing something, I can perceive it doing it, and I would like to give it food for thought.

it's annoying to write for a blog. I got used to writing for myself, and I can skip a few steps... oh, well.

questioning the nature of reality is probably the most fun thing we can do, as thinking beings. it's full of paradoxes, and it's full of unprovable and unfalsifiable assumptions. but we should go through everything and find out what does matter.

why? because of software patents. and human rights. what we, as intelligent beings, should strive for, is maximum efficiency: the maximum amount of enjoyment with the least amount of physical resources. and when you think about that, it does matter if religions start screaming that science is evil.

so, my message to any possible gods listening: I will test my world, and try to understand it. I don't care if that's good or evil. I want to know everything.

f1rst p0st

the year is 2010.

I decided the world needs another blog.

To define life, an understanding of reality must be wisely filtered. To define wisdom, a description of those aspects of reality that life consists of is required, as wisdom may be described to be the understanding of life and the ability to define reality. The purpose of meaning, or the understanding of wisdom, is the description of reality accompanying life.

today I thought about how little some little people can be. "living out their lives, oblivious". so reality check: I think about stuff, I have the feeling I understand some of the things I see, but this does not make me better. I am not better. I am just lucky, because I have the possibility of keeping a log.

clogging away at the internets.