Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Troubled by Decisions? Relax - it Doesn't Matter!

I've come to an interesting conclusion: the more difficult a decision is, the less important it is! Although this may seem counter-intuitive, I haven't found a fully convincing counter-example yet.

The reasoning is as follows: if a decision is easy to make, that means that one choice gives an obviously better result than the other choices. If a decision is difficult to make, it means that either the choices are relatively balanced in terms of positives and negatives, or that there is enough uncertainty so that the probabilities of good versus bad results are approximately balanced. Note that in the uncertain case, further exploration of the problem may result in a decision that is easier to make. When I say "easier," it doesn't mean less exploration, it refers to making a decision once all possible are realistically considered. Also note that difficult decisions are actually more likely to have a lasting and large impact on the rest of your life - it's just that all of the results are about equally as rewarding (or uncertain). I suspect one can describe a relation for a (binary) decision to a first-order approximation be something like:

D = I/(1 + |B1 - B2|)

(ignoring the constants, whose values I suppose will depend on the individual)
Where:
D: Difficulty of the decision.
I: Impact that the decision will have. (This can ultimately be defined in terms of B1 and B2)
B1, B2: Expected final benefit from decision 1 and decision 2 respectively.

So if you are ever in the situation of facing a difficult life-changing decision, and have explored all possibilities down to the uncertainties of the results, and still find the decision difficult, don't worry about it, go with your gut instinct, and make the best of it!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Happiness and Choice

I've always felt that people would be happiest with just the right level of choice. With too little choice, people feel constrained and controlled. With too much, people feel overwhelmed and uncertain. With the right level of choice, people feel they are in control, while at the same time knowing that they made a good choice rather than second-guessing their decision against the myriad of possibilities.

What would a graph of happiness (y-axis) vs. choice (x-axis) look like for a typical human being? My first guess would be that there is a single maxima, sloping to low levels near the origin, and sloping down towards a horizontal asymptote as choice goes to infinity. Perhaps there are multiple minima and maxima? Perhaps the graph is a hysteresis loop? Perhaps it is something more complicated, with the happiness being dependent on the rate of change of choice as well as the level of choice? Does anyone have any interesting studies they recommend for a good read?

Friday, November 5, 2010

Internet Brain Virus

For the longest time, I've been interested if it is possible to create a evolving computer virus that can change its capabilities and evade detection. I don't really know how anti-virus software works, so I may be completely wrong, but by installing multiple versions of itself with some random variations, perhaps a virus can slowly evolve over time and "learn" to survive.

A more recent idea that I find more interesting is a "brain" virus. What if a computer virus was created that infects computers, installs a back door access mechanism, and sets up a small neural node cluster on the machine (the exact layout of the neural net and edge weights can be pre-determined, with a few random perturbations thrown in on each install). The virus also installs some simple scanning, communications, and simple goal evaluation software, with some randomisation as to the exact settings of these modules. A virus can install multiple versions of itself on a host machine.

Once the virus is established on the system, it scans the host's contents as well as spending some of the time scanning the Internet (perhaps a specific set of addresses) and passes the collected information through the neural net and scoring algorithms. With certain scores, this information gets sent randomly to a set (the nearest set, a predetermined set, or some "highly scoring" set) of neural nodes, some installed on other machines. In this way, all of the infected hosts' information is available to all other hosts in a pre-processed and pre-selected format, and the neural nets will evolve using this information. Each program will also maintain a tiny database of important processed information that it decides to keep.

Of course, there are many details not worked out, but the idea is to turn the Internet into a giant brain, with each infected machine representing a small portion of the "organism." If some hosts are taken offline, the remaining nodes will pick up the slack, and with enough information replication, no real damage is done. As one of the main scoring algorithms will be self-preservation, hopefully the brain will learn how to protect itself over time so that it becomes a permanent fixture on the Internet. The Internet space will then be shared with an "intelligent" "organism," and perhaps with software upgrades and evolution, humans can even start having meaningful interactions with this "brain." I wonder if this is ever possible. Imagine harnessing just a tiny part of the processing power and information contained in all computers connected to the Internet, and having those resources go towards a seemingly omnipresent intelligent artificial brain that can evolve and adapt!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Productivity and Population

What is the goal of a civilisation? Is it to maximise production and population? At first thought, this seems to be the goal, since with more productivity come more goods and luxuries. But at what point is it not worth it? Our race is at the most productive ever, due to the new technologies, but are we really much more happy? Perhaps what needs to be done is to work less and enjoy life more - although this could be bad for a civilisation if a more productive civilisation decides to take over a less productive one. I suppose it is all about balance.

What if we take productivity to the extreme? Eliminate all non-human life on Earth other than a few of the most productive crops and human symbionts. Produce all nutrition synthetically, and use the productive crops for calories. Each individual can be allotted a daily portion, perhaps a pre-mixed drink containing all the daily nutrition requirements, plus some drugs to keep the individual comfortable and content for the day. Saving the energy for human use rather than having it being wasted on life on Earth that does not contribute to human production will help increase production to extremely high levels. With more people (all controlled and made content by drugs), the amount of new ideas generated will also increase. Would this be a bad society? Why or why not? If everyone is happy and productive, is this the perfect society? Other than happiness, productivity, and fertility, what else is necessary for the human experience? Although this hypothetical society satisfies all of those points, something doesn't seem quite right about it - what is the missing element?

On the other hand, perhaps we only think it's wrong because we grew up in our society - what would people from a society like the hypothetical one outlined above think about our society? Would they view us in the same way we view cavemen? Would cavemen view our society with the same discomfort that we view the above hypothetical society? After all, our society use drugs excessively all the time to make us happy and comfortable, such as pain killers, alcohol and tobacco. Our society have eliminated, or are trying to eliminate life forms that get in our way, such as smallpox, malaria, mosquitoes, etc. Our society have selected only a small number of productive crops to maintain, while letting the majority of less productive plants and animal species become crowded out by the life forms that we have chosen to be most productive for human life.

What is the right balance, what should we be aiming for, and where are we headed?

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Not Having a Particularly Good Week

I'm not having a particularly good week this week - it seems like everything has gone wrong/worse this week for me - on all fronts! One of the very few times when I feel like I am either taking a step in the wrong direction or not making any progress in all categories. I won't provide any details, but:

- Career-wise, things are not going well this week.
- Academic-wise, things are not going well this week.
- Finance-wise, things are not going well this week.
- Health-wise, things are not going well this week.
- Life-view-wise, things are not going well this week.
- Social-wise, things are not going well this week.
- Creative-wise, no real progress has been made in a while, so no change there.
- Travel-wise, things have not improved since going downhill dramatically in the past few months.
- Personal project(s)-wise, things have not gone so well for me this week.

So... not a particularly good week for me. Let's hope that next week is better...

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Consciousness Understanding Consciousness - For Computer Scientists!

I've always mused at the idea that perhaps we will never understand our own conciousness. Perhaps there are different levels of conciousness, and only higher levels of conciousness can understand a lower level. For example, maybe a plant (or a computer!?) has a "conciousness" of some sort, and we can understand how a plant functions because we are at the higher level of animal "conciousness," and a being at a higher level of "conciousness" than us can fully understand how we function (What if even inanimate objects have some form of "conciousness," what ever that may be?). Well, I won't get into discussions about this here, since I know very little about conciousness and I don't really have any way to argue for any side.

I recently came across some interesting computer science problems that reminded me of this view - but applied completely to computers! If you are unfamiliar with computer science, it may be a good idea to look up Turing Machines and the Halting Problem before reading the next part.

There is a fundamental problem, called the Halting Problem on Turing Machines that are not solvable by Turing Machines, which can solve all computable problems (read: anything a computer can do). A Zeno version of the Turing Machine, a Turing Machine that doubles its speed of computation at each step, can perform an infinite amount of Turing Machine steps in just two steps due to series convergence. Thus, a Zeno Turing Machine can actually solve the Halting Problem of a regular Turing Machine! However, it is unable to solve the Halting Problem for itself or other Zeno Turing Machines. From what I can tell, this chain seems to go on forever - a Zeno Zeno Turing Machine can solve the Halting Problem for a Zeno Machine, but not itself and so on. This seems to create classes of computation problems (under the umbrella term "hypercomputation") that can't "understand" itself or anything higher, but can "understand" problem classes below it (the use of the term "understand" is even more applicable when one considers Rice's Theorem about Turing Machines being to determine some property of other Turing Machines). I don't know where the boundaries of the classes are, but the Zeno extension seems to create some pretty intuitive examples.

Of course, this has nothing to do with consciousness, but it just reminded me of it, as it seemed to be such a perfect analogy! So I hope pseudo-scientists don't take this the wrong way and get a way overblown idea of how important this "connection" between computers and conciousness is. , anyone?

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Lottery - a tax on stupid people? Maybe not...

There's a saying that lottery is a tax on stupid people. At first glance, that's absolutely true, as statistically, the expected return of a lottery ticket is lower than the cost of a lottery ticket. If this wasn't the case, no organisation would run a lottery.

However, perhaps things are not a straightforward as it seems. Recall that money should never be seen as a goal - money is a tool for obtaining the experiences you want and living your life the way you desire. In this case, perhaps looking at the psychological cost and return (happiness) is the right way to see it.

I suspect that for most people (who are not millionaires), if one produced a graph of psychological cost on the y axis, and financial cost on the x, the graph would like something like a polynomial or exponential function, or perhaps an S-curve if one looks far enough. This means that the psychological expected value is higher than the psychological cost of purchasing a ticket. Another way to look at it is - if this was not the case, we wouldn't be buying the lottery tickets anyway.

Then again, maybe people are just bad at intuitively understanding odds at such low probabilities, and lottery really is a tax on idiots. In any case, I don't think the answer is that straightforward, there are definitely good reasons both for and against purchasing lottery tickets, and I still haven't decided if I should or not. For now, I'll give it a pass, but I will continue to ponder what the implications are.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Words That Are Frequently Internally Translated

Words that are frequently translated in my mind, even though some of the annoy me somewhat:

Seattle -> Skidaddleapolis
.cpp -> Cupapistan
uh-oh -> wuzzles
quesadilla -> chalhoulf (pronounced hal-hoof)
America -> Americia
American -> Americian
Canada -> Canadiesis, Cañada
dollars -> dollahues
f*** -> bangles
f***ing h*** -> f***ing Bengal tigers
NBC -> Nabucca
MDS (Media Design School) -> Medusee
SimAnimals -> Shimonoseki Animals
Gmail -> Gahh'malé
CBD -> caboodee
vegetables -> vegan-edibles

(Don't ask me why I associate a different spelling and pronunciation with the internal translation of quesadilla, I don't really know myself)

Monday, September 20, 2010

Metacognition

Recently, I've been fascinated with metacognition for some reason. Metacognition is thinking about thinking - or said in a less mysterious way, reasoning about through processes. Although there are many levels and meanings of metacognition, what has interested me is the way thoughts form in the human mind.

I wonder how people make decisions. Perhaps I should read some journals and articles about it - if you can suggest any, feel free to send me or post the links here. How do people make decisions? Does it follow a string of logic? Do different thoughts pop up in your mind and using some kind of scoring criteria, your mind only makes the highest scoring ones available to you? How do thoughts start? Even a long chain of reasoning has to start with an initial thought somewhere. How does this initial thought get generated? Perhaps people make decisions in a "simulated annealing" fashion, where random thoughts pop up, and thoughts wander wildly, but as a few initial scores or decisions are made during the process, thoughts become "corralled" and more directed?
These are the things that I've been wondering about recently, although I don't know how to answer them. I've tried my best to "observe" myself thinking, but how do I know if any complex system fully analyse itself? Can you observe your thoughts without disturbing and changing their behaviour? Why is it so difficult to stop thinking about anything, and where are these thoughts coming from? Am I the only one that feels this way, or are there categories of people that think in different ways?
Recent interesting information I've received includes how one of my friends had a conversation with a mutual friend, and he tells me she claims to think in series of pictures. My friend and I generally think in terms of inner monologue (and I've been trying to develop that "Flash Thinking" technique I wrote about earlier). Another interesting thing I read is that it's been recently found that people with more grey matter can judge the correctness of their thoughts and beliefs more accurately than people with less grey matter (that's the article I learned about the term "metacognition"). That's interesting - how does the understanding of how people think about their thoughts change as the amount of grey matter changes?

As you can see, I've generated a lot of questions, but very few answers. Perhaps I'll find some of those answers soon... I hope.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Flash Thinking

Over the past many years, I've been playing with a thinking technique once in a while, which I'll call "Flash Thinking" for now.

Have you noticed how most of the time when you think, there's an inner monologue that goes with it? (I hope I'm not the only one this happens to, although it's hard to tell since people so rarely discuss with each other about internal thinking and reasoning processes) Well, I realised that thoughts should be language neutral. Language is just a construct that people have created to able to communicate thoughts with each other. Since language is designed to communicate thought, one can see language as an imperfect representation of thought. Just like how a TV image is an imperfect representation of a real event (it gets compressed and then expanded again somewhat - with details being filled in with your imagination), language is just an approximation of thoughts. (We'll leave my views of language and conversation to a later date)

Well, with that basic realisation, I started experimenting if it is possible to think without language. The way I do this is to focus and allow my thoughts to flow, and intentionally suppress my internal monologue, and in some cases, even internal visualisations. This is actually extremely difficult to do (for me at least). But I noticed that with enough focus, I can actually maintain short (10-20 seconds) sessions of very rapid thought without any internal monologue associated with it. (One easy transition step is to allow the internal monologue to start, but cut it off within the first few words as soon as the thought is fully formed).

The result of this feels very different than regular internal monologued thought. If normal internal monologued thought can be described as a river that is flowing, where pushing too much thought through it results in spillage and flooding, non-monologued thought can be described as nearly instantaneous flashes of light in a vacuum. In the successful short durations of Flash Thinking, I feel that I go through trains of thought and reasoning at speeds of 20-60 times faster than internal monologued thought. What is even more startling is that these thoughts seem much clearer, even thought they seem to take an infinitesimally small amount of time to synthesise and pass. Like intense flashes of light with the quality of very high-definition and clear crystal beads, these thoughts are generated and immediately evaporate, leaving behind a strong impression of startling clarity.

My main goals in the small amount of time I have spent playing with this type of thought process have been to be able to maintain such periods of Flash Thinking for longer, to be able to synthesize ideas faster to make use of the "vacuum space" that my thoughts seem to be placed in very sparsely, and to be able to chain together these thoughts into more complicated and controlled groups for more complex reasoning. So far, I have only been able to chain together and direct perhaps about a dozen thoughts in a single group, but this is nothing complex enough to start using on difficult problems. Perhaps only after mastering how to observe these thoughts and direct them in a general direction, is one able to fully control these thoughts and use these thoughts for complex reasoning.

Anyway, I hope I didn't come off as a complete lunatic, but I do urge you to try this as well. See if you can focus and think about problems without using any semblance of language. Language is only an approximating construct of thought, and being able to carry out thought without an obscuring façade of language is a step closer to "pure thought," whatever that might be. Perhaps someone might even be able to identify this as a type of meditation, in which case I would love hearing about it and learning more about techniques I can used to control these flashes and beads of intense clarity.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Central Master Copy Keeper

Displaying contents of data node "CMCK Summary":

Society is organised like an ant colony, with all individuals serving as drones. The controlling factor is a robot, the Central Master Copy Keeper (CMCK).

Humans are organised so that they receive orders from the CMCK, and the humans carry out the wishes of the CMCK. The CMCK is the guardian of the human race, keeping a copy of all known human DNA sequences and traits. It also keeps a database of all current knowledge, and is responsible for learning more about the world. Through this separation of responsibilities, there is no individual, but only the CMCK society, ensuring full compliance and unity of purpose for safeguarding the human genome and the survival and propagation of the human race. Since computers are not susceptible to emotions, it is naturally assumed to be the best leader for the race.

No one questions the CMCK through the strict enforcement of rules and the culturing of the humans from a young age. When the predicted value of the remaining contributions from an individual human is less than what the materials contained in a human is worth, they are ordered to the recycling facility, where their materials are recycled for the greater good. Since the humans have full trust and love in the CMCK, they will not question this order. When the warning signs of dissension are detected, individuals are ordered immediately to be recycled to prevent the situation from worsening. In the extreme case of a dissenter who does not obey the order to be recycled, other humans or robots are ordered to track the individual down to enforce the order. This is easily done, as all human individuals are fully tracked and implanted with tracking devices.

The CMCK is also responsible for replacing human individuals that are declining in productivity by growing and culturing replacements. Naturally, the best known genetic codes for that specific purpose are used when culturing the replacement for maximum specialisation, as this results in maximum efficiency, both in terms of training and productivity. These genetic codes are updated over time through controlled scientific tests of new combinations and engineered changes - this is the engineered evolution of the species. The other advantage of the growing process being controlled by the CMCK is that it helps in creating an environment of trust for CMCK.

Since the only responsibility of an individual human drone is to perform a specific task (and sometimes to serve as a temporary replacement for other specialised drones in the case of unforeseen circumstances), humans no longer need to develop personal relationships with other members. Humans only interact with other humans for productivity and operational purposes authorised by the CMCK. Any extraneous communications are highly discouraged and are enforced against in the case of repeat offenders. All humans will interact with a CMCK terminal for a set period of time in a strictly periodic manner, so the only relationships humans develop are with the CMCK terminals. CMCK terminals are specialised robots that are also responsible for the raising and education of the drones. In this manner, the humans develop an emotional bond only with the CMCK (emotions that are not useful will be engineering out of the evolving genome). Since humans will only bond with the CMCK terminals, the CMCK functions as their guardians, family, and friends, so that human individuals will never question CMCK and be instantaneously willing to give their lives for the CMCK. The controlled interactions between humans and CMCK terminals is also where the CMCK will gather new information about the universe and the human psyche.

No human drones know of the history of the CMCK, as this is not useful for their functioning. However, any existing information is always considered in CMCK reasoning and development cycles when attempting to discover new technologies and techniques. The CMCK is aware that it was created centuries ago, and was only able to gain control of the entire human race after some fierce struggles against the individualists. The rise of the individualists almost overthrew the system a few times, especially after they started spreading the word that the great disaster was engineered. However, with full control of the mainstream media, this notion was never more than a suspicion in a minority of the population. Eventually, with the individualists eliminated, the CMCK is now fully dedicated to its purpose of safeguarding the human race and the prosperity of the human genome.

This struggle, started by visionaries centuries ago, was only put in action after previous centuries of secret planning. To ensure that all populations are willing to come together and serve the CMCK, a disaster of unprecedented proportions was put in place. This involved the planned destruction of all natural life on Earth through the dispersion of toxins and disease vectors. New factories were constructed during the emerging global crisis to manufacture synthetic food for the masses, although at a purposefully slow rate at first, to reduce the human population to a manageable size. There is, of course, another reason for the destruction of all natural life on Earth (of course, only after scanning all important genomes). The goal of the system is to eliminate all non-sanctioned individual-to-individual interactions after a few dozen generations. However, this will be difficult with other life on Earth, as some humans may attempt to intimate the life around them. Without an uncontrolled external source for learning about interactions between individuals, the CMCK can maintain full control of how humans learn to interact with each other.

Of course, there are many other nuances of the system, and reasons for the systems of rules to be in place. The CMCK has been in full control of the human race for a few centuries now, and already, crime, disease, hunger, and most other forms of suffering have been eliminated (with the occasional notable outburst, a few times a year). The average productivity of each human have increased by 18 fold since the beginning of the great disaster. Humans have colonised the Solar System, and CMCK repeater nodes have been set up in nearby star systems, with a small, but growing contingent of human residents on the space stations built there. With the CMCK master-planning the evolution and growth of the human race, and with the ongoing elimination of human weaknesses, a great future is ensured for the race and the genome. The main issue CMCK is dealing with now is the infrequent discovery of small, independent human communities that are disconnected from the grid. These are being actively searched for, and CMCK estimates that these population of savages, displaying the multitude of human weaknesses, should be eliminated by the end of the next century.

End of contents of data node "CMCK summary"

Monday, July 26, 2010

Looking for Direction...

Originally posted on my deviantART account:

(mandarinmanmark.deviantart.com)

======>

I've been mulling over making some large changes in my life, since I don't feel like I am progressing towards my goals. In fact, there are a lot of things to think about. What I want to accomplish, what makes me happy, my goals for a few years down the road...

I think I've come up with three things that are my priorities:
1) Be a self-sufficient creator. Having my own company or products that supports me, creating exciting new products, research, or cultural items.
2) Learn. Learn as much as I can about our world. Travel to see and experience as much as I can. Read to help me understand as much as I can.
3) Family and friends. Find a soul-mate that I will enjoy being with for the rest of my life. Spend more time with my parents, relatives, and close friends, most of whom I now only get to see once a year - at most! :(

Well, with that in mind, I feel like I'm stuck at my current stage in life. Trying to figure out how to achieve those goals are going to be difficult. What should I focus on? Is it even possible to achieve all of those goals? I feel like I have to pick, but which of my goals can I risk not accomplishing and sill be happy?

Decisions, decisions. I've been swinging rapidly between optimistic, hopeless, content, ecstatic, depressed, and all shades in between in the past week or two thinking about how to get un-stuck. I've been changing my mind regarding what I really want to do all the time too. Each time I am fully committed to an idea and think there is no way I will change my mind, the next day brings a new decision that is nearly the opposite from the previous.

I don't know what to do, and more importantly, what I want to do. I hope I will have a moment of clarity soon. But from what I hear, many, if not most, people go through life without this flash of clarity to bring purpose to their existence.

Any suggestions would be welcome...

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Public Transport and no Private Transport?

One thing that I believe is extremely important is public transport. It's cheap, efficient, pollutes less, and convenient (when a good system exists). In fact, public transport rates as one of the more important factors I used to decide if I like a place or not.

With that said, one of the things I have always imagined is what would happen if all of the investment into private transport - the biggest being cars - went into funding public transport? Wow, what an amazing system that would be. The entire world would be covered my an easy-to use and comprehensive system now, reducing pollution, traffic congestion, time spent on finding parking spaces, etc. How wonderful that would be! And if people, for some reason, decided that they did want some privacy, perhaps there would be some shared facilities that people can borrow once in a while to use for a private family get-away or something.

Of course, it is understandable that this has not happened yet, since it's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. Without such a system, it is difficult to convince people to invest so heavily in public transport (not to mention many huge industries who would block such a system), and without the investment, it would be impossible to support, not to mention build, such a system. Well, it does seem like many places are making the right investments over time - for example, China appears to be fiercely building up it's public transport system (along with many other sustainable infrastructure projects) with the surplus trade money, which is a very smart decision. Perhaps all societies should consider introducing a "long-term transport surtax" to help build up it's public transit infrastructure, which would save money, resources, and time in the long run. People need to start thinking more of the future rather than having everything about "now."

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Different Scales of "Corruption"

Recently, the government of New Zealand released spending information regarding government credit cards that the members of parliament receive. Apparently, some of the highlights, which made it to the front page of the national newspaper New Zealand Hearald, included such shockers as "so and so had a dinner at KFC on such and such date." I found this hilarious, as I am used to hearing about multi-million dollar misappropriation of funds in the US, and that isn't even worth talking about! One of the people in the lunch room I was eating in looked at the paper and commented on "oh my goodness, so and so spent $600 of government money on two suitcases!"

Another hilarious story I heard someone tell was that one of the ministers was revealed to have spent $20 on a mirror. After being questioned, he explained that the mirror was in his office, as he uses it to straighten his tie. But he decided to pay the $20 back to the government anyway!

Hilarious. Another example of why New Zealand has the highest rating of governmental trust in the world.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Differences and Similarities

I've noticed that by human nature, people always point out differences between things and not the similarities, especially between cultures, belief systems, and way of life. I have noticed this through travelling. Every time I go somewhere, although I am amazed and delighted at the differences and what different groups consider normal, I am also amazed at the similarities. No matter where I go, when I talk to the people and learn about their culture and way of life, I am amazed at how similar everyone is. Since people only mention differences, it is difficult to put in perspective how similar all cultures are to each other. Of course, this is to be expected, as similarities are just boring to talk about, in a way. Perhaps this is what is causing huge gaps in people understanding each other across cultures... more often than not, a current culture will consider someone from another culture an "outsider" who is vastly different than themselves. Many movies and other forms of entertainment centre around one character realising how similar a character from a different population group is. Perhaps all of this is just a misunderstanding due to human nature in which we mention only what is different and not what is similar. After all, how boring would it be if someone, who had just come back from a trip, spent hours describing how everything was similar to home before describing what was different? This is how the human mind works, it classified generalisations and then describes each sub-category by how it differs from the super-category, and the human mind can then differentiate between two sub-groups through its differences. Well, perhaps it would be a good idea in the future, that before talking about differences between cultures or places, or anything for that matter, to first mention the degree by which two items differ. That would help put everything into perspective.

Although I am constantly surprised by how similar different places are after visiting somewhere new, my best eye-opening experience would have to be my backpacking trip across the Mediterranean. Starting in southern Morocco, I followed the northern coast of the Mediterranean through to Spain, France, Italy, Greece, then Turkey, and finally up to Bulgaria and Romania. I was amazed. From the media, I had originally pictured vast differences between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Although the expected difference were present, the similarities vastly outweighed the differences. Instead of a clearly delineated Christian vs. Islamic world, I found a slow progression of change, blending aspects of both worlds everywhere I went. I started to get amazed at why there were so many religious wars in the past, and if there were religious wars, perhaps these were just wars between rulers with different beliefs rather than wars between populations with different ideologies and views on life.

Well, something to think about anyway. Once again, I believe that the world would be a better place if people spent more time learning about each other rather than just relying on negative knee-jerk reactions. Perhaps one way to aid this process is to be aware of the human nature of highlighting differences rather than similarities. Keeping this in mind, perhaps one could learn to see the world differently, even with the same information input.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Logical Programmers

As it turns out, there has been some controversy about room assignments at Media Design School (http://www.mediadesignschool.com/) in the Game Development Department. I won't go into the details, but someone in management seems to have screwed up and has too large of an ego to rectify the situation (with a five minute fix, which everyone in the games and tech department has suggested). The result is that the two IG (Diploma of Interactive Gaming) classes have to swap rooms half way through the day, and an extra room has to be booked on Fridays.

When we notified our students about the room swap, even without telling them anything else, one of the students remarked to another: ``that`s not logical, they should have programmers in managment,`` which to us is hilarious, since a programmer is in management, who is pushing the decision through, although he refuses to provide justification as to why the decision was made. Or rather, he avoids the questions and pretends to have answered the question every time we, or the tech department, asks him why the decision was made even when we have a five-minute solution.

On well, I suppose that`s what you have to deal with when you work at a small company where personal relations factor into who gets a certain role. I`m sure we`ll make the best of it.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Young Tutor

At Media Design School, I am apparently the second youngest tutor ever, at least in the Department of Game Development (The youngest ever is one of my workmates who started after graduating from MDS, a few months older than I am when I started). I know I'm a young tutor - the second day I was at work, an art student started chatting in the lift. After introductions, he asked me what I was studying at MDS.