May '09 Rationality Quotes

New post asking for quotes over at LessWrong. As usually I trawled it for a few highlights. My, I am quoting an awful lot lately, aren't I?

"And when someone makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means."
-- H Beam Piper, "Space Viking"

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
-- Peter Drucker

"From the inside, ideology usually looks like common sense."
--John Quiggin

"The trouble with trying to be more stupid than you really are is that you very often succeed"
-- C.S.Lewis The Magician's Nephew

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
-- T. E. Lawrence

"If our Gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then let us admit it must be said that our love is scientific as well."
--Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

"Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it."
-G. K. Chesterton

"Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"People normally read only their own horoscope in the newspaper. If they forced themselves to read the other 11 they'd be far less impressed with the accuracy of their own."
-- Richard Dawkins, "Unweaving the Rainbow"

"But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"

"...any inward-oriented and continued effort to improve the match-up of concept with observed reality will only increase the degree of mismatch...Put another way, we can expect unexplained and disturbing ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or apparent inconsistencies to emerge more and more often. Furthermore, unless some kind of relief is available, we can expect confusion to increase until disorder approaches chaos— death.

Fortunately, there is a way out."
-- John Boyd, Destruction and Creation

"You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words."
-- William Congreve

My new favourite joke

In stats today my most esteemed and dry lecturer made the following joke.

"Three statisticians go into the woods for hunting. When they find their first target, the first statistician fires but misses one metre to the left. The second fires but also misses, this time one metre to the right. The third statistician then announces, "Got him!""

And for some reason, I was the only person in the whole lecture hall to laugh. Like laugh out loud. Everyone around me sorta turned and gave me a look. I couldn't help but just keep laughing sooo hard ^_^

Little Foster

Me: Yes, I am writing a book.
Katherine: With Colby Rook. *pause* *giggle* That rhymed!
Me: RookBook.
Chris: *sighs and rolls eyes* Aww... Shanan ... *disappointed look*
Me: Hang on, I'm trying to think of a witty rhyme for Kan.

Several minutes later.

Me: KanYarn!
All: *giggle girlishly*

***

Me: *complaining*
Chris: Can you feel the empathy emanating from me?
Me: I can feel my own self-pity reflecting back off you and hitting me...
Katherine: I can see it! *points at Chris* Blue and *points at me* yellow!
Me: ... Is that a remark about my skin colour? Racist.

Several minutes later.

Katherine: I wish I could speak a different language.
Me: I can!
Katherine: *sarcastically* Really? I never would've guessed.
Chris: *chuckle*
Me: Is that a racial remark? Just because I look asian doesn't mean I speak asia- Chinese!
Katherine: *burst out laughing*

***

Katherine: My parents got a foster child. Courtney - she bites.

Several minutes later.

Me: And it has to grow up with you. Poor little Foster.
Katherine: *Jumping in to correct me.*
Me: I've forgotten the bastard child's name. I'll refer to it as Foster from now on.

I am a winner.

Perhaps it's just me trying to compensate for my lecturer's stringent mocking of me yesterday, but today I was determined to win at everything. Any debate, discussion, Pokemon card duel or chess match, I was determined to beat my opponent and beat them down hard.

To be fair, most of the time, that's likely to be my mentality. Or at least it is when it comes to talking with Colby. We talked a bit about Spiral - nothing that would compromise the integrity of the project, just musing out loud about how we work. For instance, I criticised him to having picked up all the deliberately loose threads I'd placed. Often in the chapter directly succeeding mine. But he pointed out to me that he'd also not bitten a lot of hooks I'd thrown out.

Which was true. But I never noticed because those things I'd thrown out were almost never anything I'd considered significant to my plot or mythos. Ergo, the lines he did pick up on were all the ones *I* too had considered important. Guess we're both on the same wavelength - why else would we novel together? ;)

I'd still prefer it if they didn't all happen directly after my chapters... leave the readers with a bit of suspense about what they mean. It'd be like on Lost you see the four-toed statue and then the next episode you see it's Tawaret. But the speculation and intrigue and the sublimity of when the threads come together lies in the fact that we saw the foot in the season 2 finale and finally got to see the rest of it in the season 5 finale.

I should've mentioned the above to him during our chat today, but I didn't. But hopefully he still reads in which case he'll receive my message and my apt metaphor.

Probably an equally valid comeback he could make is that there are threads he has yet to pick up but are planning to later on down the line. That's the position I'm taking. There are things he's alludes to and I've mentioned in passing of my own chapters that will come together further down the line. Most likely in chapter 7.2.

Eugh. How did I manage to turn a post that was supposed to be about my chess match against Chris today into one about Spiral?

Chris came up for our usual Tuesday appointment. My Darkrai deck vs his Magnezone deck. Both of them are supremely good. It hadn't occured to me just how good they were until today. In terms of strategy, we've got it down pretty well. The first match I couldn't setup at all, and thus I lost. But second match, I got set up very quickly, him a little later but I was pretty too far ahead and thus won.

After that, we shethed our decks and I unfurled my chess board. I so should've bought the glass chess set I saw at Paddy's Markets for $10. But I'm too cheap for that. That and the fact that they REFUSED to lower the price just drove me away.

The frst match was really fun. He opened with the "3-move-checkmate" I'd learnt from Ferr all those years ago, and so I countered it pretty quickly. I soon got some Rooks out and was blitzing the field. It didn't take long, but an oversight from Chris made him very vulnerable for a checkmate (and I was surprised that I even saw the opening. I may not be as rusty as I imagined myself to be having not played chess in years and yearned for it for months now).

Second match was far more fun. The way he opened blocked his Bishops and thus I was able to get both Rooks out very early in the game. a quick castle from him opened up his other flank vulnerable. I very quickly acquired a lot of his key pieces (what with him having a Rook and Bishop trapped). He quickly made use of his Queen to make some threats against my side, but since I had both Rooks out and about and my knights, I was able to come to a 'stalemate' with her, allowing her in my territory but leaving it no where to run. Eventually I make a crucial mistake and forget that in an attempt to prevent a potential escape, I lost a Rook, deafening my strategy.

Eventually, however, we puts on a strong offensive with his minimal pieces left. And I put up a few *very* good offensive-defensive moves. And then when he was very close to victory, I was able to find a loophole in his defense, checkmating him ;)

And thus today I am a winner.

A blow to my manhood

Lecturer: I don't like it when you use big words.

...

Lost 16+17x05 - The Incident

... I'm not going to bother with spoiler tags. Pretty much if you haven't watched the finale of season 5, GFTO.

What an abso-fucking-lutely amazing episode. Yes, that did require tmesis. In terms of overally mythos reveal, storytelling from technical AND narratological perspective, and character developments, this definitely sits near the top on my all time favourite Lost episodes. Now onto the actual episodic breakdown ...

Actually, before that, a note on how I analyse episodes. It should be clear now that I think people who can only extrapolate from the elements of the show and dismiss anything that does anything extra are idiots. Up until this point, anyway, TPTB withheld important mythological factors for the sake of good storytelling. And as such, any theories that JUST use what's in the episodes will never hit the mark. The mythos = empirical details + hidden details. And since they're hidden, we can only guess them.

And the way I approach guessing them is to think how I would personally answer things, as that is ultimately going to be the best. It doesn't matter if I'm wrong - since we have no actual hints as to these hidden things, any guess is as valid as the other. What sets one theory above another is that it feels right. For instance, before Deathly Hallows, I was absolutely convinced that Dumbledore would be revealed to be evil. I had a long, spiralling and in depth theory as to how Voldemort was the only person alive who knew Dumbledore's secret (where he got his power by dark magic with Grindelwald). There were really no clues that led me to think that, it was a theory that answered hanging plot points.

In reality, I wasn't too far off. I mean, I correctly guessed Jo would de-throne Dumbledore from his pedastal and that he had a much deeper relationship with Grindelwald than just defeating him. The manner in which this happened was obviously very misled.

Did the hydrogen bomb explode?
Probably the most pressing thing and the thing TPTB wanted us to focus our attentions to. I mean one only has to think it through. We are led to believe that the bomb went off - the sound effects and the white flash. So first episode season 6 ... However they start it off, they HAVE to address the issue - if we see them on the Island, nothing changed, and if anything else then they changed things.

If they DIDN'T change things, that is whatever happened happened, they are going to have to jump through a lot of hoops to not make it a disappointment. As the season cliffhanger, if they resolve it as a dud pretty much straight away people will hate it. Just think of all the shows out there have leave with season cliffhangers only to resolve it within 2 minutes of the next episode.

It is for this reason that I think it will be necessary for the bomb to have gone off. For that not to have been what always happened. That it isn't the incident. (WAIT! CAVEAT: The only satisfactory answer is if it is what causes the incident - BUT the Losties timetravel to the Ajira time. But even here I think there could be some problems..)

Under the assumption that the bomb explodes and they've erased them ever coming to the Island. One wonders if how that happened is that they destroyed the Island and therefore there is no reason for them to land. Or if the bomb really wasn't as strong as everyone made it out to be such that it lacked its cataclysmic properties and caused minor damage and that the Island was relatively unharmed. OR is the explosion's affect on the universe's self-correction principle that things just reset/alter to one where the Island still exists? I'm thinking it's going to be either of the last two.

Either way - if the show progresses with 815 landing as normally with all the passengers there unaware of all they went through ... Then they're going to waste half the season just trying to remember or even getting back. And as we saw in season 5, that would just feel rushed and uncessary.

Thus we are left with a few options, all involving consciousness travelling. 1) 815 still crashes and the whole cast wakes up from the crash except with all the memories of the Island. Thus they never have to redo anything or try to gain their memories back - it's 2004 and they can get on with whatever main plot season 6 has. 2) 815 lands. Losties consciousness travel directly onto the plane. Thus they will seek each other out and get on with the main plot. 3) 815 lands and zombie losties live their lives out for three years. 2008 roles around, and suddenly they all consciousness travel there, disoriented by the lives their zombie selves lived in the past three years. (That is, Jack buries his father, then stays a doctor, possibly remarrying .. and then waking up in his brand new life).

What will be interesting is which of the Others will also consciousness travel. I think the main players... Ben, Widmore, Richard, Eloise will ... Then again, if I make the rule too loose then I might as well say the entire world will consciousness travel (which could potentially happen, but won't that just be odd? :\).

The only antithetical arguments for things changing is that it doesn't really leave room for the Shadow of the Statue people. If things change, will they remember? And if they're not on the Island and in 2004/8, will they come looking for the losties? But if they all wakeup after 815 crashes .. then they'll need to travel to the Island all over again before they get there.

On the plus side, dead people can come back ... Charlie (hence the Driveshaft ring that Sun finds, left there since season 3 (and assumed to be forgotten/dropped)), Boone, Shannon (!! :D), Alex, Rousseau. And probably most importantly, Jacob.

Jacob and friend
Boy, did I get m theory on Jacob not being Jacob and in fact the actor being cast as The Economist wrong :P Turns out he is Jacob. We learnt many things about Jacob, and funnily in learning these things, more and more mysteries are opened.

Lots of people are clinging to the idea that Jacob believes in the good of people and the ability not to do wrong by the Island, unlike his compatriot, whom I will called X, who thinks it's human nature to defile the Island. I'm almost certain that's what they want us to think, and therefore isn't a valid position to hold.

I refuse to believe that it's all just some "game", what people are subscribing to, either. I definitely think the stakes are high in this.

Also, my running theory right now is that neither Jacob or X have anything to do with the Egyptians. I think Jacob brought them there, similarly to how he brought the Black Rock (most likely) and brought 815. Would that be amazing if the Island wasn't Egyptian at all, but they were only one of the first people to find it? And I say this because they're forcefeeding us all this egyptian stuff - the heiroglypths since season 2, Ben's secret door, the tunnel walls, the wheel chamber, the statue, Smokey's mural. None of it seems like the Egyptians made the Island or have anything to do with its components - it's like they're just an extra layer on top of the already existing core.

So what are Jacob and X? It pains me to have to say this, but I'm leaning towards something I mentioned a few posts back ... Angels. Not the archetypical, wing-sprouting flying beings... But I mean beings who are bound by God's will. So why can't X kill Jacob? I think it has to do with ... one of my favourite phrases from Lost: The Rules.

I think of the most important lines of season 5 comes from The Variable, in which Faraday remarks that "we are the variables". Humans. Free will - that was God's gift to humans, a trait he denied the angels. There are rules, things which the angels must abide. But ultimately, the rules don't apply to humans. God's great experiment.

And this is why X is able to successfully get Ben to kill Jacob, something he couldn't do himself. The loophole bypassing the rules of God. Which is also why Jacob just stands there and takes it from Ben.

Of course this doesn't answer *why* Jacob is bringing humans to the Island. Why he's touching them. Could touching them be giving them free will (likely not unless he's touched Ben...)? Then Desmond isn't as miraculously special as Faraday made out. Or does touching them just mark them special, or naturally bring them to the Island? By what criteria is Jacob picking these people? To what end do they serve?

I was also toying with the idea that Jacob and X were really one person - maybe the soul and the body of the one person. At first I was theorising last week that Jacob was Richard's soul that he trapped in order to stay alive. Like a horcrux type situation... but maybe it's between Jacob and X?

Dead Jacob???
Nope. They're not going to introduce him for only one ep, considering his major role in the story of the past and the future. He will come back (either by the past changing), even if it means his death by Ben was orchestrated.

Could the "Candidate" Bram and Illana discuss mean a possible candidate for Jacob's soul? Alternatively, could his presence at John Locke's fall ... and elongated physical contact, such that it reawakened Locke... could he have ... er... transferred part of him into Locke? And now is waiting for to get up in front of Illana, Bram, Sun, Richard and the Others?

Speaking off...

Lock dead???
Noppe. Again. His story isn't done. Either X's possession of his exterior isn't *just* a facade, I mean he has access to all of Locke's memories and idiosyncrasis. Sure, that could be a power X has. Or Locke's in there somewhere.

Alternatively, maybe John Locke does actually come back to life. Much to the surprise of everyone, especially X and Jacob, whom have never seen it either.

One of the most important things I think all the people on forums are overlooking is that John Locke made himself special. They seem to take this to mean he isn't special at all, that it was all a ruse he made. Alternatively, I look at it from my own humanist perspective. He made himself special. His specialness is much greater than any ordained specialness because it is one he gave himself. So I think there is a real possibility he will come back and ultimately be what causes the end of the entire show.

Christian????
I have no idea what to think of Christian right now. I am and always was certain he was more than Smokey incarnate and that he was special. The question is, of course, what his role is. Whose side is he one? In fact, whose side is Smokey on? Or Widmore.

That's all I can afford to write tonight. *sleep*