Quotes for a July 2009

As usual, I have sourced the following quotes from LessWrong's monthly quote bash.

"Do stuff, read stuff, think and make up your mind. Have you actually selected an entity which you think of as "objective"? This is like having a slave port in your brain."
-- yosefk


"There is no real me! Don't try to find the real me! Don't try to find someone inside of me who isn't me!"
-- Princess Waltz


"When I was young, I thought the act of getting older meant, year by year, getting more sophisticated, more hard, cool, and unpitying. Less innocent.


"Maybe that was a childish idea of what getting older was about. Maybe adults, mature adults, get more innocent with time, not less. Because the word "innocent" does not mean "naive," it means "not guilty."


"Children do small evils to each other, schoolyard fights and insults, not because their hearts are pure, but because their powers are small. Grown-ups have more power. Some of them do great evils with that power. But what about the ones who don't? Aren't they more innocent than children, not less?"
-- John C. Wright, Fugitives of Chaos




"Philosophers who reject God, Cartesian dualism, souls, noumenal selves, and even objective morality cannot bring themselves to do the same for the concepts of free will and moral responsibility. The question is: Why?"
-- Tamnor Sommers — Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, “The Illusion of Freedom Evolves”



"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire




"The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head."
-- Terry Pratchett, 'Hogfather'




"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
-- Terry Pratchett, 'Hogfather'




"Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory."
-- Daniel Bershader



"Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions."
-- William James



"I don't know how many people I've met who hold beliefs like "in three card stud a four is more likely to come up after an eight than a six." What the fuck? Is the concept of random that hard to grasp?"
-- Alphadominance



"The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. "You'll find," he remarked gently, "that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.""
-- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth



"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice that failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
-- R.D. Laing, Knots



"Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do: such things as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe."
-- David Stove, What Is Wrong With Our Thoughts



"It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."
-- Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, 'Good Omens'


"Go is a game of big moves and little moves. One problem we will examine here is what may look big now can, in the final analysis, be small, and vice versa. The ability to see what is and what is not territory and potential territory is to see the truth on the board."
– Peter Shotwell, Go: More than a game



"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."
-- Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long)


"You say that your opponent lacks humanity. It's the oldest semantic weapon there is. Think of all the categories of people who've been classified as non-human, in various cultures, at various times. People from other tribes. People with other skin colors. Slaves. Women. The mentally ill. The deaf. Homosexuals. Jews. Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, Armenians, Kurds [...]


"But suppose you accuse me of 'lacking humanity.' What does that actually mean? What am I likely to have done? Murdered someone in cold blood? Drowned a puppy? Eaten meat? Failed to be moved by Beethoven's Fifth? Or just failed to have—or to seek—an emotional life identical to your own in every respect? Failed to share all your values and aspirations?


"The answers is: 'any one of the above.' Which is why it's so fucking lazy. Questioning someone's 'humanity' puts them in the company of serial killers—which saves you the trouble of having to claim anything intelligent about their views."
-- Greg Egan (as James Rourke), Distress



"The future already happened. We just haven't reached it yet." - Sarda the Sage
-- Brian Clevinger, 8-Bit Theater


"The future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed."
-- William Gibson — National Public Radio: “Fresh Air”, Aug. 31, 1993



"That's not right. It's not even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli



"Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled 'wrong'."
-- Raymond Smullyan



"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
-- Albert Einstein




"Don Quixote: Dost not see? A monstrous giant of infamous repute whom I intend to encounter.


Sancho Panza: It's a windmill.


Don Quixote: A giant. Canst thou not see the four great arms whirling at his back?


Sancho Panza: A giant?


Don Quixote: Exactly."
-- Cervantes

Happy Potter and the Plot Hole

Unexpected e-mail from Chris:

I saw some of the trailers for the new Harry Potter and it got me thinking. You know how Potter’s invisibility cloak is one of the Deathly Hallows and supposed to be uber powerful as even Death couldn’t find the bloke he gave it to in the first place. Then how come Moody can see him?

Good point.

Move out of the way Shakespeare, you've met your match.

Would it be completely presumptuous of me to announce another project I'm gonna try starting to work on? If so, would it also be arrogant for me to undertake a project that's an attempt to revive Shakespeare?

I watched Were The World Mine today and it was a spectacular film. A very pomo take on Midsummer Night's Dream. What struck me most about it, however, was when the characters started speaking in iambic pentameter. Most of Shakespeare's writing, when spoken aloud, sort of has an archaic feel to it, and it's not just a factor of the obvious anachronisms, but there's just something there. But modern day speech in iambic pentameter is filled with a glory I can only assume the audiences of Shakespeare experienced.

It would be a lie to say it sounded completely natural. But at the same time it wasn't unnatural. I guess one could say it's supernatural. Like many things I am for in life, it feels like it perfectly matches precisely what it's supposed to be. In this case, it would be language and metaphor being utterly congruent through an iambic meter. Guess it's why most people consider it one of the most pertinent measures in English poetry.

Therefore, I wish to embark upon a journey of trying to write a play in total iambic pentameter, using the spondees and phyrric feet Mr Shakespeare would've used, using the dramatic devices and all the beauty of the English language. It's more than just a reshaping of a classic Shakespearian play into a modern (or maybe even post-apocalytic) interpretaion, but is a totally new play in our current modern day setting, utilising the language. This, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been done in mainstream culture (I'm almost positive someone out there would've done it.. but it's not reached by ears).

I mentioned some time ago that I was gonna write an Oscar Wildean play, flourishing purple prose adorning my script, and I had a pretty neat Earnestian plot ... but maybe I can utilise that here. How much humour can be conveyed in iambic pentameter, I wonder. Or maybe I'll come up with a completely different plot.

Every time I read something about poetry or think about Othello I also start talking to myself in lil' podules of iambs. Figure why not try stringing them together into a more substantial work? Trick is now to get my hands on my old Shakespeare texts from school, which will have my notes so I can properly observe the tropes and devices ;)

It's like I'm a piece of metal attracted to an extreme magnetic force hiding behind three brick walls.

Originally Posted by Queen RaMeL o
I think this thread needs to be shut down. cant believe AW has let this one gone on as long as it has..
its gone from Marijuana to calling ppl names to same sex marriages..
Everybody think their ways is right and they have the right to think that way but, calling other people names cause of the way they beleive or was taught is just wrong. not everybody is gonna have the same opinion on certain things. isnt there enough Drama and BS in RL without having it in here too?
it is evidence that this is turning into a fight not a disgustion

Again, I question where you're getting this from. Not all instance of what you perceive to be "name-calling" counts as being offensive/insulting. As far as I can tell no one's called anyone out for having a differing opinion. The comments lie in the reasoning of the person leading to that conclusion.

For instance, Person A wants to argue that murder is wrong. Why? Because human life is sacred and murder is taking that from them. If I were to call that person an idiot, you could argue that that was name-calling and it turning into a fight and no longer a discussion.

But if Person B wants to argue murder is wrong, with the reasoning being "I flipped a coin; if it landed heads, murder is wrong and if tails then murder is right". Then it's within *my* rights and everyone else's to label that person an idiot. It wouldn't be "you're an idiot because your opinion is incongruent with mine" so much as it was "you're an idiot because you're forgone any sane reasoning".

Same logic applies here.

So I commend AWI for not buckling to every cry of foul play and moderating with due rationality ;)

(sort of keeping a record in case Flagg decides to get all forum nazi on me)

Bigpond Fail

I log into my Bigpond account and this is what I'm faced with.

Fuck off. That'd be over $3000 :P Let's see if the @BigPondTeam over at Twitter can solve this dilemma for me ;)

dun Code Geass #2

I've finished watching Code Geass  for the second time. Well, that was about an hour and a half ago... I've just managed to gather myself from the blubbering mess I was ;)

I am now officially inspired to go forth and produce projects these holidays

:)

On MJ's Death

Isn't it odd how it always takes something which is a large scale event that always highlights interesting and differing philosophies? These things are really the core values we all individually live by, and yet we only discover them after the fact, as it were. I recently learned that as this blog aims to chronicle my life, I am compelled to blog about the death of Michael Jackson.

From a purely utilitarian perspective, Michael Jackson's death would be one of the more large scale deaths that have happened in recent years. The next earliest would be Princess Diana, and I don't even remember that... But MJ was a prominent figure in the media over the past years, what with his trials and erratic behaviour, which, on top of his already successful music career, places him as one of the biggest and most common household names (you know you're at that stage when you're parodied by like every cartoon/satirical series :P).

So yeah, with the passing of Michael Jackson and the flurry of tweets and blog posts and forum threads, I've had a good chance to observe some basic reactions. People are really upset and saddened and when questioned will respond with "every death is a sad one". The almost automatic response is "what about people in Ethiopia" or "the deaths in Iran", which I think is a legitimate rebuttal - you can't maintain that your crying over MJ's death is a consequence of his inherent humanity and its loss being sad AND still have time to sleep (as opposed to mourning the deaths of every other person in a 3rd world country every 4 seconds (or whatever that banal statistic is)).

Alternatively people have a very lukewarm response, their reasoning being precisely that because so many people do die has a matter of empirical fact that a single death doesn't warrant such an emotional response.

If you know anything about me and my philosophies, you're going to know I don't like either response. Chiefly because a reaction to death isn't going to be a logical conclusion. I suppose in a Husserlian and Wittgensteinan phenomenological way, the emotion comes prepacked with the event. Our reasonings and rationalisation are just post hoc processes and to treat them otherwise is just foolish.

It's just as ridiculous to propose that one can rationalise ones way out of an emotional state as it is to rationalise yourself into one. That's not how emotions work.

It's the same flaw in pretty much all the other standard reactions. It's sad because he made such a contribution to the music industry, he was so mocked before his died, he died before his time, "I have a personal connection with his music/him". It's not sad because he was crazy, a drug addict, a paedophile [note I'm not saying he was, these are just reasoning I've seen cited].

At a personal level, just to document my own reaction, I'm not phased much. I mean I can see and appreciate how he contributed to the music scene and our society in general and acknowledge the huge effect his death will have for many people, but I'm not going to impose any emotional state on me because of that. Nothing he's done has ever inspired me or been judged by me as having a beautiful quality to it. Not sure why I said that, now I think about it, even if something of his was beautiful or inspirational, that wouldn't affect my logical interpretation of his death, so long as I still have the original stimuli.

Perhaps most bizarrely, some moron over at the AW forums has suggested that because of the way MJ possibly died (ODing) that his death was some how less impactful than Ms Fawcett's, who died of cancer. Ignoring my own philosophy on post hoc emotional rationalisation, that's still such an odd thing to say. As if the power of someone's death can be altered in anyway by how they died... Surely what makes their life valuable is .. well their life? Can we placed methods of death into some heirarchy? Car crash at one level, cancer at another... What about dying in a car crash with cancer? Or better yet, on the way to the hospital to get cancer treatment? How about on the way out? Does it matter if you were terminal or not??? Porche or SUV?! Let's just totally ignore what they did, to whom they did it, how they did it while they were still alive.