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...

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?

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.

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)

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.

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.

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"