12.23.23 11:33pm What advice would you give someone who is learning computer science and programming?
Learn by making things you are interested in. As much as possible, avoid decisions that obscure your understanding of what is actually happening. Confidence improves when you build your own systems from the initial void of all possible design and implementation decisions.
7.24.23 9:24am Its been a month, how are things going? Are you still working on websites?
[Initially answered on 7.25.23] I have been in between jobs again. Not fun. But I've been working hard and feel smarter and more capable because of my efforts across the last three months. I completed the lexer and parser for MALang. Also completed a budget tracking application to try to impress a company in my interview. Made it using all the tech they requested in the job description. I thought it went well, but that was a week ago and I haven't heard back yet. Tough world. At least its a good possibility lingering in the air (I haven't been rejected yet). There are more prospects cooking up, so I am hopeful everything will settle down soon. The HUGE thing I haven't mentioned is that my first child will be born within the next 7 weeks. His name is Samuel. [Update on 8.2.23] They called back and scheduled a technical interview, which was yesterday. It went well. They called back today and scheduled a final interview, which takes place in two days. Let's hope everything continues to go well! [Update on 12.28.23] I got the job (which I started on 8.28.23).
6.23.23 5:40pm Whats you working on right now?
Just finished building and deploying a React/Next.js website. That still has some aesthetic loading issues I don't like so I will probably work on that some more. Right now I am writing a compiler for this as an interactive web app. Also, I would like to get two music videos done this weekend (answering on 6.24.23 at 9:00am).
5.24.23 12:50pm Jesus died to set you free from your sins and rose again 3 days later! Repent and trust in Him alone for salvation! You will be forgiven of your sins and receive eternal life!
✨0
4.19.23 1:26pm Did you ever find a programming job? If so what did you think about it?
yes. 6 months ago from the date of this question. at the moment, i am too close to the encounter to speak with clarity or wisdom about it. instead, i will choose the form of ranting diatribe. i am doing more programming now than i have ever done. things have taken a turn i never expected. there is lots to do in this direction, and a lot of work rests on my shoulders. it is easy to get caught by negative thoughts on days where progress leaks forward. what is important to remember is that the leak generally hits upon a well. With effort, a leak always seems to appear. That is an indication that the universe is full of wells. You can get to the point where half of your problem is being lost in wells. That is a better half of the problem to be on. Even better, you can try to map the well system - to engineer a navigation system that ensures, at some point, all your time will be spent on only the things that matter (the things that get results). having a grand ol' vision lends itself to swarming negative thoughts. the thoughts are an attempt to prove that 'what you are trying to do can't be done'. the truth is, something 'like it' can be done - but it is best done over time. it is best to acquire the minimal set up needed to progress to the immediate future, but in an adaptable state that can be improved over time. i have a good idea of what i need to be doing, and am in complete control over it. that is a lot of risk and responsibility. don't really have anything else to say right now i guess.
3.11.23 5:10pm VARIOUS THINGS ARE OCCURRING AT ALL TIMES.
there is at least one way of thinking about things where everything is one thing that is happening.
2.23.23 12:57pm What happens when an atom is spilt into two?
depends on the atom. also, what would `into two' mean when we bring into consideration the fact that there are conceptual objects lower in emergence than the atom?
9.22.22 12:29pm do you have any movie recs?
rosemary's baby
9.8.22 7:07pm Would you ever return to A.P Brewer High School, If give the opportunity?
i wouldn't say it is off the table completely, but in all likelihood, i don't see it happening.
9.2.22 10:15am Do you believe Helen Keller, and her accomplishments are real?
Yes, it seems probable enough to justify the word belief. Of course, she had an amazing teacher who deserves praise. I once read a letter that Helen Keller wrote to an orchestra after having listened to Beethoven's 5th Symphony on a radio (she 'listened' by touching the cone of the speaker with her hand). She had a lot to say about the experience. The mind always finds ways of putting brain regions to good use, even if you are missing functionality in some sensory organs.
8.26.22 10:30am It has been rather interesting not seeing you around the school, but I certainly miss you. You made my sophomore year pretty fun. I hope that I’ll see you again maybe soon, then again maybe later in life. I hope you enjoy the gifted mug :) As a question, how have you been lately?
I recently saw a picture of everyone having fun out there and felt some strong nostalgia! I miss you guys too. Hope you all are doing well. I do like my mug! I will report that I am now going half-caff because for the first time in my life caffeine is giving me weird physiological effects. As for how I've been, I feel a good lift in my spirits. I sense opportunity emerging but will refrain (as always) from feeling any entitlement towards it. Just to let you know, I did a massive update to the journal section in case you're bored.
8.11.22 3:37pm what are you doing now that you aren’t teaching?
i am working on a graduate degree in computer science. i am looking for jobs in that field but it is an uphill battle because i don't have the best credentials. in the meantime i have been substitute teaching.
7.29.22 2:58pm Have you ever see crickets have sex
i don't recall. i once kicked what i thought was a twig but turned out to be a cricket but it was brown so it might have just been a carcass so then i'd be okay.
7.26.22 8:06pm Where do you think your future leads you? Do you have a goal for the next 10 or so years?
i'll write a letter to Wittgenstein and ask him if he ever truly got a good overview of things. i am fighting to transform. i have a clear vision of three years worth of duties. slipping up even a little could slow things down substantially.
7.25.22 10:55pm do you feel as if you succeeded in teaching your students? what did you want them to really take from your lectures (in general?)
surely there was failure as well as success. in general, i hoped for my students to discover their own agency. i also hoped for my students to develop a sense of awe for being. i hoped for my students to develop a little forgiveness for themselves for not being exactly what they want to be at any given moment. i hoped that they could leave my class with more awareness, less personal guilt about things beyond their control, but more agency to enact control moving forward. i am sure this answer is rushed and that i could do a better job of representing my feelings, but there isn't really enough time now to do any better. my tendency is to unravel my own regrets and past stupidity as time progresses. i want to be kinder to myself about the earnest attempts i made as a teacher last year. i admit that i was far from an exceptional teacher insofar as teaching the content is concerned.
5.20.22 5:39pm I’m crying
i do that too.
5.18.22 2:48pm Favorite composer? Mine's Rachmaninoff.
i don't know about favorite, but lately i have enjoyed listening to paul hindemith.
3.21.22 9:18am ur gonna get fired , see ya
ok
3.12.22 5:22pm Top 10 mind viruses?
hating yourself
loving yourself
hating another person
loving another person
god
nihilism
individualism
collectivism
the "real" numbers
integers
3.10.22 6:51pm Here’s the thing. If i spend my life following Gods word and praising him. and i die. and there is no God. then i lost nothing. but, if i spent my life denying God and choosing not to believe . and i die. and everything that the bible warns u of is real. i lost everything.
this is a mind virus. mind viruses tend to tell you that there are only one or two ways of thinking about the mind virus. that's what they want. they want you to only have a couple options and pick the one that is obviously and immediately right even though it might bake in a ton of hidden assumptions.
i do not fear that i am going to hell. there are people who might think that i am in fact going to hell. i wonder what stops anyone from thinking anyone else is going to hell. i wonder how much another person thinking i am going to hell should affect the likelihood that i am actually going to hell. then i learn things about what would have to be true if i were going to go to hell. once i thought about these things long enough, i did not feel i have much to worry about anymore.
i have thought enough about these sorts of thoughts to have peace. i try on beliefs like hats. you can even stack a bunch of hats on your head at once you know? i think that believing too much in any idea ends up subtracting from the total value of the space of all beliefs.
i am concerned with the pursuit of truth, which i see as a spiral towards some representation of ground truth which can be expressed and easily understood by anyone. this takes effort, patience, and skepticism about yourself. it is a bad idea for me to just assume i am right about all the things i have ever thought or felt. i am actually wrong about a lot.
my god is my pursuit of truth. my god is my responsibility to my family. my god is my responsibility to myself. my god is my responsibility to the world. i constantly fail my god. i feel ashamed of my failure. i even fail because i try too hard to strive to do what's right based on what i think is right for my god. i am hard on myself and often i hurt the people i love most because i am so close to them that i have a hard time distinguish between them and myself. i am also selfish and pathetic. i catch myself lying to myself all the time. this is why i try not to lie, it disgusts me and i think that most people are pathetic liars and that it is easy to learn to be that way. i think that there are so many beautiful things about people that help make up for our pathetic nature.
i pray to my god everyday for strength. i don't even have to pray. striving itself is my prayer. it is my hope that through effort my prayer will be met. i pray for truth and to have my eyes opened in new ways every day. i pray that i may be shown wrong so that i can learn from my faults. i have many things for which to pray. my prayer is hardly recognizable to an external person. it is not something i feel like i have to always talk about. to talk about it too much would just be an excuse not to practice it.
if i am going to hell then i am going to just have to live with the fact that i was somehow made to be a person that couldn't succeed at such a semantic game.
3.10.22 3:16pm are u a complete idiot
i've been trying to calculate what percent idiot i am, but that's kind of hard once you're at a certain percentage of being an idiot.
3.10.2022 1:58pm Thoughts on berserkers?
i am glad i have never had to worry enough about berserkers that i was forced to think thoughts about them.
3.6.22 9:42pm I have a riddle for you. if the river runs to the crow then how does Odin fly if the lion chases the mouse then what is in the house. What is dead beneath the river.
the earth
3.5.22 5:48pm What is your favorite conspiracy theory?
morality and ethics
3.5.22 5:45pm Potatoes are demons in my soul
oh no.
3.5.22 11:49am Is Jacob Smith your favorite student?
no.
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2.10.22 2:31pm sunflower seeds are fun.
i am in no position to doubt you.
2.8.22 6:53pm How big is space
finite, but potentially unbounded
12.9.21 2:43pm Is anything truly random
currently, the most predictive and descriptive models of physical reality declare that there are fundamental limitations to observations and measurements. randomness is a useful tool within the framework of probabilistic models. these probabilistic models are our best attempt at dealing with the fundamental limitations. hard to say whether or not randomness itself is a fundamental feature of reality. it sure seems to be useful for a bunch of things though.
12.6.21 2:18pm How did you enjoy the vomit I made for you this morning?
if this is really you (which for some reason i doubt, but i can be surprised), i hope you're feeling better.
12.3.21 1:37pm If you punch yourself and it hurts, are you wear or are you strong?
if you punch yourself and it hurts you are stupid, which is a smart thing to try out being every now and then.
12.3.21 1:36pm Does freedom really exist?
idk. why don't you try it to find out.
12.3.21 1:34pm Did humans invent or discover math?
it might depend on the math. the real fundamental stuff is definitely discovered. the specific ways we talk about those integers and relationships is through invented notation, but it is notation that is adequate to describe the formal mathematical relationships that we discover. you could invent any arbitrary notation system to represent those relationships. also, the fact that we have the ability and freedom to choose axioms is something that we discover (euclid's geometric postulates are another early greek example). but, i am sure there is some incredibly high level math that is mostly just abstract symbol games with little relation to physical derivation. but that doesn't mean that this sort of math isn't itself discovered. i guess you're getting into semantics at that point. i definitely think stuff like transition rules are discovered. it makes no sense to me to say that finite cell automata are invented. it's just looking at a zero or a one and looking at the adjacent bits to determine what it should spit out as the next state. this sort of formal system will always be able to be constructed out of the abstract. such systems are derivable by any conscious being able to contemplate from first principles.
12.3.21 12:35pm Who is your favorite Greek mathematician?
pythagoras was right about integers. if it's not an integer then it's a relationship.
12.3.21 8:35am How is school going?
purdie good
12.2.21 2:58pm Forgive me for asking about Wurtz. I later read all of your journals and have been educated on your influences. thank you.
no problem and no need to apologize. i don't think you should have to be an expert on me or my website to ask a question on this page.
12.2.21 2:32pm Why do you do it? What is the point of all the videos and songs? Are you inspired by Bill Wurtz?
yeah, i went through a period where i discovered bill wurtz and a latent part of my personality all of a sudden exploded in every direction at once and i just had to start making things. i started making the simplest stuff i could get done just like he did. i was creating things before that, but a lot of it wasn't getting done because i was trying to do more than i could handle at once. my skills hadn't developed enough for me to accomplish certain visions. as a consequence of the tools i had to work with and my inspirations (and also my voice and my visual characteristics) my stuff shared a lot of qualities with bill's stuff. i went through many crises over not being original enough until i finally stopped caring because i started to see the ways i am different. i could name a few. i have a group that i love writing with and being creative with. i find it far more creatively rewarding than working alone (but i still want to get better at making things on my own). i also have a wife and value that part of my life. i find it definitely worth the time and effort. miranda adds so much to my life and challenges me in many ways. getting married young (we started dating when i was 16) is a big difference. another difference is that i tend to lean into a certain kind of aggressive tone in my music at times. we don't share all the same influences and i am sure as i become more capable in different domains, my own qualities will become more and more apparent. anyways, at some point the time i had available to create solo work decreased, and since then, i have been focusing more on group music, teaching, and getting better with technology. i am still very much so at the beginning of my creative life (if i am blessed with a decent lifespan). this website is really just a shrine to creativity in general. i just cannot stop myself from being in love with the fact that existence is happening and i am in it and have the ability to add stuff to it. i get to participate in it. i am sort of a slave to it really. if i had more time i would probably still be doing videos. if you pay attention to my latest work, i began moving more and more away from that wurtz style, but this website here is still pretty wurtzy. it's hard to escape when you really love simple html and are presenting your creative works and have the necessity to group things into pages. i have a lot more creative stuff i want to do, it is just a matter of time at the moment. i don't plan on ever stopping. i will be making new things until i am dead.
12.2.21 11:48am are you a street lizard?
there was a moment where i imagined myself using those words, but recently someone told me what other people say it is and that definitely doesn't describe me. so idk. it's a shame for things to get so mixed up. sometimes you just feel a little lizardy and are walking down the street.
11.30.21 11:43am Are you gay
idk. are you? i got a wife. i guess that's pretty gay.
11.30.21 11:39am Are you a satanist?
no
11.30.21 11:38am do you believe in God?
it is hard to say because i don't if the words 'belief' and 'God' mean the same thing to me as they do to you. perhaps my feelings about this are esoteric to the point that i should just hang up the hopes at being able to clarify them to most people.
11.21.21 3:46pm why do we exist just to end up dead
i am not afraid to share my position here, but it isn't the sort of position that many people want to hear. i have not discovered any objective 'why' that satisfactorily explains our existence. there does not appear to be an objective 'why'. there may be an objective 'how', but it isn't clear that the how explains the why. why does anything exist? based on the deepest guess i have, it simply seems impossible for transition rules NOT to exist. transition rules can always exist in the abstract, so even in the presence of 'nothing' (no data structure or computation space) a trivial transition rule could exist which sets up the initial computation space. i have very few opinions about whether or not a personal (human-like, or human-caring) influence had any role in the origins of reality. i think holding opinions too strongly about this is somewhat foolish because it is metaphysical and untestable. however, i do feel as though there are a lot more intellectual and rational issues with assuming a conscious agent at the beginning. it causes more unanswerable questions than it solves, and whatever it 'solves' it just creates arguments based on personal desires and preferences. it is hard to take a position on such things while remaining neutral. i am the kind of person who would rather just hold the information inside of myself and weigh the possibilities than committ myself to any direction. i value truth highly and take it seriously, even when it is difficult. i also value religious tradition and wisdom for what it's worth. the strongest position to hold is to be able to see the world as clear as possible from all angles. this lets you use the useful bits of each worldview.
the 'why' you are talking about is a very zoomed-out 'why'. humans are animals so thinking about whys that are so zoomed out is going to cause discomfort. most people seem to not be in conflict with these whys. it appears to me that most people inherit cultural/religious answers to these zoomed out questions. in my opinion, these answers are pretty much never satisfactory. there seems to be a few classes of people. there are the people that are satisfied with their answers to these questions. they find no reason to question the answers they have inherited. there are people that begin to question the answers they were given but then dive into apologetics because they value the worldview they were raised with more than truth itself. these are not the only sorts of people, but they are examples of thinking about people from a certain perspective. there are also people who have come to reject the answers they were given when they were younger. i am of the last type of person, and i don't think i have found any answers to replace what i was raised with. it is hard to replace answers that only worked because you didn't question them in the first place. i am okay where i am at now. what i care about is moving closer towards the truth all the time. even if you can never fully know whether or not you have found the truth, there are methods to see if what you think is reasonable and descriptive of mechanisms that actually occur in the world. i have learned that to get closer to the truth you have to be more comfortable with knowing that there are things you don't know. it is also important to know that there are limitations of knowledge. different kinds of knowledge even have different limitations.
the good news is that there is no real reason why a person has to have answers to these big, zoomed-out questions. i prefer zoomed-in whys. there are uncountable zoomed-in whys in which we can invest. is death going to happen to me? yes. what happens when that happens? i don't know. it seems that death is where i won't be. that's what it looks like externally at least. when a person dies, that person that i knew is no longer there. i lose access to them. so, the closest thing to a truth i can offer is that when i die people will lose access to me (i probably even lose access to myself). while i do find this to be a sucky thing, it isn't something that has to ruin me. there are still so many reasons i can find to live every moment. i find that, based on my natural disposition, i am inspired by the world. existing excites me. there are uncountable songs to be written and sung and recorded. there are so many interesting inventions to be made and programs to be programmed. so many people to meet. so much love to be exchanged. so many sights to see and places to visit. if at some point, i just stop existing, it doesn't feel like a huge concern. i want to be living right up until i'm not. there is a lot of suffering in being alive. i do not deny that. it is vitally important to me to reduce suffering to the point that the meaning that i discover and choose in my life can be the dominant force. this isn't always the case. it is important to be tough in life. it gets you through times where it doesn't exactly feel that living is worth it. the best mindset is the one that helps you gain control over your life so you can improve it based on your own values. if your values are also concerned with what is 'good for people in general' then there is a good chance that you can be a positive force in other people's lives too (we just have to be careful). the world always needs stronger families and communities.
here is my answer to your question. we have to build up our lives so that we have some tangible meaning and purpose for which to live. why do we have to care so much about whether or not all the whys are answered? in my life, when i have been defeated by depression and meaninglessness i decide that i have to dig in deeper to uncover the next layer of meaning and responsibility. i am not advocating against caring about interesting questions. i just think that we should care in accordance with how useful and reasonable the questions seem to be in the first place. wrestling with difficult questions can do a lot of good for you though when you come out on the other side.
11.1.21 6:37am what are you eating for breakfast
a granola bar. not too happy to admit it. i intend to improve my meal planning.
9.7.21 2:40pm how to deal with loneliness and the feeling of being left out?
i would like to give you a response that would adequately address your question, but i don't necessarily trust myself to be able to speak so generally about loneliness while remaining truly helpful. the subject of loneliness is so personal to each individual. unfortunately, i do not know enough about your specific troubles to speak more specifically so i opt to respond with a more cautious approach. i don't want to accidentally give harmful advice.
i could speak more at length by simply describing loneliness in different resolutions and perspectives. doing so would probably be foolish of me. however, i will still do it because i am in this for the learning experience as well. be warned, however, that my own understanding and beliefs shift and change with time. so i am likely to have more developed thoughts and feelings about this in the future. this means that all ideas are subject to reasonable skepticism. don't leap too quickly to take anything i say as a credible authority for truth.
at the most inward level i see loneliness as a phenomenon that is deeply attached to being an isolated conscious being. i think any creature that is alive and aware will possess some feeling of isolation and loneliness. it is a bit disturbing being so aware of an interactive material world but at the same time realizing that, at the core of the experience, there is a you that has to communicate with others. the best that can be done is communication through some type of natural language. for humans this has developed into complex spoken language. as far as loneliness goes, human beings are a weird type of animal. if you look at all of the other primates, it seems as if the entire species has a pretty agitated psychological profile. primates are pretty highly social creatures. so we have a lot of built-in desire and craving for connection and attachment. in fact, social achievement essentially describes the invention of complex civilization by modern homo sapiens. this achievement was in social coordination. those efforts have compounded into the complex civilizations that we exist within inside our modern world.
living inside of modern civilization has a very distressing effect on the ordinary motivational systems that were developed over the last several million years. human civilization is very new in comparison to the scale of time since human species have been around. and even before that, mammals have been evolving for a long time. but really the full scale of evolution is important to consider in all of this. for the vast majority of the time that humans have been on earth, they were hunter-gatherer cultures, or nomadic herders. perhaps even very small-scale agrarian communities. but when the technology of agriculture took off, the human instinct for social connection led to the forming of complex societies. at the core of each society tended to be a set of spiritual beliefs – some cultures stricter than others. this spiritual belief structure essentially unified these cultures into a cohesive population with a central organizing principle. in fact, this spiritual belief structure is probably much more ancient than the first complex civilizations.
it appears to me that the vast flow of information in the modern world has made it difficult for people to feel connected to a central organizing principle. religion took a few major blows over the past couple hundred years. and i think that the actual practice of religion has declined but spirituality itself has been trying to make many rebounds. like i said, it is distressing living in the modern world. i have found myself being capable of reckoning with a sort of spiritual feeling i have about life. i am very committed to living. i take it somewhat as a responsibility, even though i don't feel like i have to. i choose to live despite the fact that it is very hard. i expect that living is truly very hard for anyone. no one chooses to be born. being a living creature automatically ensures some amount of suffering at some point. the point of life should be to make all of our suffering worth something that we can all agree makes living worth it. it turns out that doing this seems to be a lot harder than a bunch of influential people working in the benefit of the interest of a few. this seems to also be universal throughout all of human history. but there is a gradient. there are cultures with a more distributed gradient of power than other cultures. and i do think that interesting things are achievable. all i know is that, currently, people that live in a first world country like the united states of america are subject to a lot of disturbing normative practices that pretty horribly conflict with our evolutionary adaptations.
one simple example is that parents can feel essentially forced by a school system into putting their young child on medication because they are too hyperactive in school. i don't necessarily know if there is anything wrong with an 8-year-old child that wants to run around instead of being relatively stationary most of the day. i think that historically, children probably did a lot of running and playing all throughout their childhood. children can have a tremendous amount of energy. i think the modern learning environment tends to be largely antithetical to the instinctual habits of a lot of people.
a second example would be the food culture in the united states. going into a normal grocery store is very psychologically distressing. everything has been branded for our whole lives and things are being marketed towards us and people are obviously trying to influence our decisions at every turn – with very little care about whether it is beneficial or not. sugar is actually quite a dangerous drug at the current extent to which it is being allowed to affect people’s lives.
also related to the feeling of loneliness is the understanding that there are certain things we truly cannot decide for ourselves. we did not decide to be born. we cannot decide certain things about our genetic make-up. we can't decide whether or not we are responsible for a weird fleshy human body. we can't decide many things about our family relationships and all sorts of other random or unfortunate events that occur in the world. this is distressing. often times this is the driving force for the desire to control. i think it is important to make peace with ourselves about the full extent of our ability to decide. it helps psychologically and actually leads to increased control in the future because you start to think about your actual relationship with your ability to control the world based on actions and decisions.
it really is bizarre being aware of other conscious beings while also never being able to truly know the content of their experience. i think the longing for true unity with something other than yourself is a spiritual feeling. and this feeling is also somewhat associated with loneliness. i think there are many different traditions of music that evoke this sort of feeling of loneliness. but i think that there is also a positive element to this kind of loneliness. it is a tremendous benefit that we even have access to other conscious beings in the first place. however, i understand that it can feel even worse at times being surrounded by others and still feeling lonely. this is where i think community has historically played a major role. i think that the most important structure that has started to fail in the modern world is community. as far as i can tell community is the emotional and spiritual backbone of all cultures throughout time. the price to be paid for community is that community has historically come with some sort of restrictive code of normative behaviors. this always leaves certain individuals feeling like they are perhaps on the fringe or outside of the community and this can be a negative feeling. the good thing is that there are a lot of people in the fringe or outside of the community that are very open and creative and still quite friendly. perhaps even far more friendly than expected. but of course, there are no hard and true rules here. sometimes situations end up being a matter of timing. sometimes people go through times in life where it feels as if they are being scraped against a cheese grater. these people often come out of these periods and life improves very much afterwards. this is especially true if you are still living at home and don't have full control over your life. the advantage of childhood is to have all that time to ease the process into having to take full control over your life and actions at some point. it is unfortunate when childhood is so stressful and traumatic that it doesn’t allow for this advantage. it is especially unfortunate when childhood is so difficult that it actively makes it more difficult for the child to learn the skills that are necessary to gain control over their own life. every community should have a goal to minimize this sort of situation.
the way i have always handled loneliness is to just listen to all of my thoughts. this is true, but it might not be particularly helpful. i have never really had the ability to choose the amount of thoughts that go through my brain. it is actually very tiring. not having the choice of the speed of thoughts in your mind can sometimes make you desire a little loneliness from your own thoughts. but every now and then, just that exact thing happens, and it is an awful experience and the only thing that helps is to sleep.
on a brighter note, i don't see any reason why there isn't some way that some form of conscious unity could be achieved. it just so happens that the way organisms function (cellular life) leads to distinct individuals. who knows what the distant future brings. and also, who knows what might already exist that we don't know about. perhaps there is some biological or organic way for people to be somewhat consciously connected. all i am saying is that we can't presume to know everything or be completely sure about anything. i think that some people argue that conscious unity sounds just as scary as conscious isolation. but as i said, this is not really a factor we have control over in our lives.
if any of this strikes you as unhelpful then feel free to immediately disregard it as foolish.
8.31.21 1:47pm Is God real?
it's hard to talk about metaphysical concepts in terms of reality and non-reality. my view of god necessarily concerns how god functions in the world.
'real' things are as real as they are implemented. things that are perceptually true are also true. our mind produces our consciousness which has many interesting features that allow for a whole range of experiences to be perceived by an attentional agent. if you are reading this text and understanding it then you are an attentional agent.
to truly investigate these matters you have to have a completely open mind without any desire to achieve a certain conclusion. what you have to achieve is a mind that is open enough to try on many different beliefs at the same time while retaining the ability to think about all of the perspectives critically.
first you have to determine what sort of philosophy of mind you have. you have to determine (using some sort of reasoning) the layer of reality within which your conscious experience emerges. there are several major versions of philosophy of mind. these versions are found in various religions and secular belief structures.
dualism is a belief that has existed for a long time. even descartes was a dualist. in this belief structure there is a mental world and a physical world, and they are separated. your soul exists in this mental/spiritual world and there is somehow a link between these separated worlds. the problem with this belief structure is that it has no way to talk about the proposed link between the mind/soul and the physical world.
then you have monist idealism which says that reality is only a mental world and that the physical world is more or less just a concept we make up while living in this dream world. to the monist idealists this dream world is being dreamt up in some imperceptible realm of existence that allows us to experience what we experience. the obvious problem with this view is how the source of the dream is undefinable and axiomatically imperceptible and unknowable. for me, that makes me very hesitant about this set of parameters for philosophy of mind. proponents of this philosophy of mind often have interesting spiritual ideas which often serve to help you regulate your own behavior.
the modern secular philosophy of mind has been digging in deeper the last few decades. this view is that there is a physical world that is the fundamental and foundational bedrock of knowable reality. to the materialists, we are organisms that emerge in this physical world as a consequence of some high numbers of rolls of chance at there being a space where a system in temporary disequilibrium accidentally spawns the first chemical control model that quickly forms a membrane and begins cellular life on our planet. i am highly curious about the nature of this primordial chemical control model. i think that this world view obviously has explanatory power because it focuses explicitly on that which is readily and perceptually knowable. it also uses computational methods to do so which is always going to be highly effective if you are wanting to actually model the functionality of a system. however, good computational work produces a model that either runs or it doesn't. i still think that the modern scientific movement has a lot to learn about how general information might be, and how simple computation might be at the center. physicalists, or materialists, also tend to be very confused about why it is difficult to use natural language to discuss matters of subjective experience (such as the experience of color or any of the senses). they are confused about why they have such a hard time explaining what it is like being a thing that can explain what things are like.
the last philosophy of mind i will share with you is slightly tricky to understand because it sort of flips things around without really changing much. when this philosophy of mind becomes available in your imagination, it allows you to play with many interesting perspectives.
in the view of computationalist functionalism, there is a mental world and a physical world (just like in the dualist and monist idealism perspectives). the physical world is the 'higher plane' in which the mental world is being dreamt up. the mental world contains a representation of the physical world (which is generated by the mind). this is because it is useful for the mind that exists in the physical world to have as much data and content as possible about the happenings in the world it inhabits. our mind is some part of the physical world, and it generates an attentional agent (you and me) because it would be useful for the organism to wake up in the world and 'be someone' who can learn and get things done and make decisions in real time. it is also interesting to point out that dreams are related to this. at night when we fall asleep our mental representation is not reliant so much on its connection to being functionally aligned with the physical world. that is why our mind can fill in this space with dreams that are less related to the strict rules that we have to care about in the functional and physical world. our mind is using this time and space to generate divergent possibilities. it is probably healthy for the mind and helps generate new perspectives. to recap: our attention emerges as a component of a mind in the physical world. this mind is the operating system or control model for the entire organism. the mind is essentially a computational center that utilizes neurons to make arbitrary computations. there are several layered computational systems in the brain responsible for all sorts of behavioral and physiological regulation. at the center of all of this is the cell. the cell is essentially the discrete unit of living organisms. it is the smallest functional system that runs a control model. as a control model the cell mines physical space for computational reducibility so that it can maintain coherence despite the fact that the system is in disequilibrium. this causes there to be a negative entropy gradient between the energy of the organism's system and the max entropy of that region of space (if it were to be filled with inert matter). organisms have to pay back that negative entropy gradient by finding computational reducibility that allows them to break down energy/matter into its constituents and reform those constituents into more useful molecules. when you take in food, your body breaks it down into the tiniest molecular constituents and then the cells essentially use these constituents like they were little chemical factories.
i am very curious about how the first chemical control model could have been started. i also tend to think that information and basic computation is very general and relevant to the foundations of reality. i think there is a decent chance that geometric, 3-dimensional space is emergent out of a more fundamental discrete information network with connected notes (hypergraph). up quarks and down quarks might not be the 0's and 1's of the universe. perhaps they are yet still an emergent aspect of a more fundamental information structure.
one thing that seems rather clear to me is that everything that is true and implementable is expressible in some way shape or form within a formal system. a computer program can either run or it can't run. the things which are inexplicable that human beings hold dear are still inexplicable.
my solution is to openly say, 'hold dear, what is dear'.
most of the time, to me, it appears that 'god' is a word that – when given parameters – describes the organizing principle that a person uses to align themselves in their life. this can be a very effective aid when wondering how to handle decisions in life. there can be a lot of interesting knowledge and information gleamed by carefully and openly exploring religious text and doctrine. it is usually good to learn as much as one can about the history and development of ideas so that you can contextualize better and better over time. that which is 'sacred' is that which instigates the transformative process within you. i believe that a lot of religious work does this. as does the music and accompanying art, architecture, and tradition.
i experience the transformative process in many different ways in my life. there are many different domains of experience that i consider sacred. i heavily appreciate all sorts of rituals because of this. reading plato can instigate the transformative process. listening to lou reed can do that for me too. as well as following certain creative people that inspire me. i frequently experience the transformative process when i talk to my good friends, record audio journals for one another, or make music together. i experience the transformative process by being married to and in love with my wife. i experience the transformative process as a result of being a teacher and deeply caring about so many people and desiring deeply to do a good job at carrying my responsibilities in performing the service as their educator.
one consequence of powerful institutions (government, religion, and in more modern times corporate institutions like the social media companies and legacy media corporations) is that at some point they gain a central cultural authority to prescribe what is normative behavior and what is concerning behavior. i think that this power has often been used in a manner that harms people. but it doesn't mean it hasn't served a function. i believe that a lot of the problems in our modern world result from the dissolution of centralized normative authority (religious institutions mainly). yet the heavy hitters like the government and big corporations still remain. and they do what they can to try to shape the acceptable parameters of world view as much as possible. also, in this cultural landscape there are all sorts of new beliefs that emerge which duke it out in the world of social media. simply speaking, "belief" has never been more fragmented and granulated than it is now.
this brings me to the point about religion and god. historically, religious leaders (and eventually religious institutions) have used god to implement and parameterize an organizing principle across a group of individuals. this allows tribes and communities to form cities and culture where the entire population is essentially operating under the same incentive structure. this is why cultures would frequently go to war over their differing perspectives on god. having different perspectives on god meant that you couldn't align the primary organizing principles of your two cultures.
it seems pretty apparent to me that this is a very general functional analysis of how god has been used across all cultures (no matter the religion). what god is to an individual is something far more subjective and personal. i will admit to you right now that i have no opinion on whether or not our known reality has a creator. that is something i simply don't have any information about. that creator would have to be something very general. and at the point in which a conscious being could understand the total dynamic information structure of all of reality, i don't really know what kind of agency or will that conscious being would have. i have had many experiences in my life that has led me to finding my own alignment to desire. all i can say is that i am a very open individual and that i do not take life for granted. i see that in the most general sense i am the attentional observer that a mind has spawned for itself, to essentially be itself. i try to stay in balance and regulate myself as best as i can like we all do. from day to day i try to do what i think makes the world a better place. i am highly compassionate and have a strong empathy for others. however, i am also strong willed and not always the most agreeable. i try to strive to have a high self-efficacy. i desire to allow myself to be as much as i can be. i try to explore the world at the speed of my own curiosity. i try to increase love while i do this. i try to be courteous. i try to enjoy what is here while i am here. i try not to take all the bad things too seriously. i realize that, apparently, my mind doesn't have an issue generating pain and suffering as a part of its experience. pain, suffering, and all sorts of unwanted emotions and physiological needs are simply necessary and unavoidable tools of the mind and body. i deal with all of these things as well as any of us do.
most of people's emotional problems stem from their inability to cope with the fact that there is a limit to the extent in which our decisions and desires influence the world. we can only decide so much. our attention and intention can only shift the probabilities of the future so much. when i have bad thoughts i try to be aware that it is okay if i don't want the thoughts to be there. i just listen and let them go and that's that. same thing with bad feelings. when bad feelings come around i simply allow myself to feel them and understand that the reason that my mind is generating these feelings for me is because it predicts that i need some sort of emotional regulation. and then i try to figure out what my mind is telling me.
my idea of god is somewhat related to questions i have about the primordial control model. i suspect that the control model is as general as information and computation. because it seems perfectly simple to get control models to work in programs. abiogenesis is an especially interesting problem. cells and life are explicitly concerned with the computational reducibility in the resolution of chemical reactions. the first chemical control model is an interesting question. how did the first cell come into being? it is a fascinating and wonderful question. i wonder how general the control model is. a hurricane is a temporary dynamic system that sustains through disequilibrium. it gets a lot of energy moving in a certain trajectory and does work on its environment as well. but it isn't being ran by a control model.
for me, god has to do with this control model. because at the end of the day, i discover that i emerge from it. i wonder what it says about me and what i say about it. i know that in many ways it uses me to do its bidding. a lot of times that can be a bitter pill. but i accept the arrangement. i also wonder why i am capable of deciding why taking one action is better than another action. perhaps i never 'decide' which is better, but we all make many decisions every day. we are all forced to act and because of that i am forced to do my best to act how i determine is right. what amazes me is how aligned i tend to be with my emotions and physiology about what the right thing to do is. the control model that we emerge from uses all these regulatory systems to bring us into this alignment. so, i also see that this control model is somehow in the business of designing preferences. i am absolutely fascinated by the concept of preference. preferences can be so wildly different from individual to individual.
thanks for the question.
8.30.21 5:54pm do you have any song recommendations?
sure
8.28.21 12:42am are you okay?
YES
7.14.21 7:12am what are you cooking at the moment?
an answer. just finished. hope it's tasty.
7.14.21 7:11am Do you think art is more for the viewer or the creator?
art is for those who love being conscious, those who hate being conscious, anywhere in between, and also a lamentation for all that isn't conscious (including, and especially, past conscious states that have been lost or degraded by time).
12.10.20 4:02pm ok
excellent
3.3.20 10:36pm Hey I think this new formatting is pretty cool. How are you this evening?
at the time of this question i was spending far too long to do far too little of a cover.
1.13.20 11:57am what or who influenced your love for music?
my relationship with being a thing that can tell that i am a thing and that there are also uncountable other things
12.27.19 10:36am Huh?
exactly
12.23.19 6:09pm I love u (:
(: