If you’re in a forgeign country and you don’t know the local language, but you want to communicate anyway, try this trick:
Speak your language in their accent.
So if you’re an American in France, speak English with a French accent. It’s certainly no substitute for actually speaking French, but it may help you nonetheless.
Make money to live
Don’t live to make money
–Anonymous
I’ve heard it said that “Acting is Being”. In other words, you have to be the character that you portray. For some people, this empathy affects them even when they stop acting. For instance, playing an angry character may leave you feeling angry for the rest of the day.
I don’t like that approach. For me, acting is understanding. I seek to understand the character even better than they understand themselves, and express this knowledge to the audience. This approach also makes it easier to separate my own emotions from the character’s emotions.
I really don’t like the phrases “what women want” and “what men want”.
You can encounter variations on these phrases all over the place. For instance, I recently signed up for a dating site, and the site provided tips on “Women’s Top Ten Favorite Conversation Topics” and “Women’s Top Ten Favorite Ways to Have Someone Flirt with Them”.
Maybe I’m taking this a little too seriously, but I keep coming back to the fact that women comprise half of humanity. It seems absurd to try and list the things that “women” want to talk about when there’s so much variation between women. It seems like we’ll all be focusing on a common denominator that doesn’t properly exist.
Perhaps more importantly, this reflects the feeling that there’s some grand difference between women and men, such that they get separate lists. But as society advances, we find more and more that the difference between the sexes is largely artificial. It was culture, not biology, that kept women from being political leaders during most of human history. And remember that sex is fundamentally a biological distinction.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that gender and sex are attributes like hair color and eye color. They don’t matter much (aside from the actual activity of sex, of course). So when I see the phrase “what women want”, it seems as absurd as the phrase “what brown-eyed people want” or “what tall people want”. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
My plans for today consist of doing absolutely nothing important and loving every damn minute of it. Nowhere to be, no one’s expectations to disappoint or live up to. Today is about letting freedom sink in.
–Anonymous
It is possible to become “attached” to pain, especially if the pain has been with you for a long time.
The same applies to all sorts of negative feelings, such as fear, or guilt, or sadness or confusion.
Having lived with pain for so long, you can wind up feeling that the pain is fundamental. Life without pain, or with with less pain, can seem bizarre at first glance. If you’re in the habit of worrying, for instance, the action of not worrying can feel….weird. It can feel unsettling and wrong. You may feel the urge to return to your pain. You may feel that the pain indicates “safety” or “normalcy”.
You may feel that the pain is a friend or ally, in a sense. This is especially true with fear, I think. The original purpose of fear is to make us aware of danger. There are better ways to react to danger, of course. Panic is hardly the most effective reaction. And in many cases, the danger is illusory in the first place. But even if you know, intellectually, that your old fear is unfounded, you may be hesitant to let go of it. You may think “If I stop being afraid all the time, I’ll grow complacent, and then THE THREAT will attack me” (whatever your personal “threat” may be).
But it is possible to let go of pain. In the end, pain is bad for you. It’s best to let go.
During middle school, some of my friends and I invented a game that we called “So We Meet Again”.
- Whoever agreed to play the game was playing the game, continuously.
- Whenever two or more players were in the same room together, any of them could get a “win” by pointing at another player (using a special gesture we invented) and saying “So we meet again!”. (We never actually counted up the “wins”, but we played the game anyway.)
- The player on the receiving end had thus “lost” the round, and could not return the point to his attacker until the game had “reset”. Likewise, the attacker could not re-attack before a reset.
- A reset occurred whenever a player entered or exited a room. So, for instance, person A might step into a room containing person B and attack them. Later, A and B exit into the hallway, and B takes the opportunity to attack A (unless A attacks first, of course).
- A player is invincible if he is not touching the floor. Thus, B might see A about to attack, and jump quickly to deflect the attack, and then land and counter-attack A.
It was a fun game, in part because it was always ongoing. It tested our ability to keep track of each other and react quickly.
There’s a trend in recent movies that bothers me: ShakyCam
This is when the camera shakes around a lot, often giving the impression that it’s being held by an amateur. Randomly shifting the visual focus also counts as ShakyCam.
One purpose of ShakyCam is to make the action seem more frantic, intense or unpredictable. The action-thriller movie The Bourne Identity, and especially its sequels, used ShakyCam during action scenes.
Another purpose of ShakyCam is to make the action seem more realistic or gritty. The documentary Bully uses this technique constantly.
Personally, I can’t stand it, because ShakyCam makes me dizzy.
It was actually ok during the Bourne movies, because the camera stopped shaking during the non-action scenes. But in Bully, the camera shakes constantly. I managed only half an hour before I was forced to leave the theater. (Thankfully, I was given a refund.) I’m sure that Bully is a good documentary in other respects, but the annoying camerawork made the film completely unwatchable for me.
I admit that most other people don’t have this problem. But still, it’s a problem for some of us.
The 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution applied some of the Bill of Rights to the states (where previously it had only applied to the federal government). In subsequent decades, there was much legal wrangling over exactly which rights had to be respected by the states. I would have resolved this by either making the original amendment more detailed, or by passing a new amendment altogether. As a stand-alone amendment, it would have looked like this:
Section 1. The governmental powers of the United States, including the federal government of the United States, and the State governments of the several States, and lower powers, such as municipal governments, shall at all times uphold the rights of the people at large. Therefore, all of them shall obey the following rules:
(1) No Bill of Attainder shall be passed or enforced.
(2) No ex post facto Law shall be passed or enforced.
(3) No title of nobility shall be granted.
(4) The government shall not establish any particular religion or any particular viewpoint regarding religion, nor shall it prohibit the people from practicing their own religions freely, or from holding or expressing their own viewpoints on religious matters. No religious test shall be required to hold governmental office.
(5) The government shall uphold the right to free speech and freedom of the press.
(6) The government shall uphold the right of the people to peaceably assemble.
(7) The government shall uphold the right of the people to petition the government for redress of grievances.
(8) The government shall not unreasonably infringe upon the the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Proper reasons for owning and using arms include defense against common criminals, defense against governmental corruption, and hunting.
(9) No soldier or similar person shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
(10) The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(11) No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury or other preliminary proceeding, wherein the facts shall be reasonably considered according to law.
(12) No person shall for the same offense be twice put in legal jeopardy of punishment, unless it has been previously proven in a court of law that the original trial or proceeding was corrupt or woefully inadequate to the interests of justice.
(13) No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
(14) No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
(15) Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.
(16) In all criminal and civil prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
(17) No fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court, than according to the rules of the common law.
(18) Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
(19) In all public elections for governmental office, each elector shall enjoy the right to cast his vote according to his own free will, and neither the act of voting for a particular candidate nor the act of failing to vote for a particular candidate shall constitute a crime under the law. Furthermore, in all such elections reasonable efforts shall be made to ensure that the votes are counted accurately.
(20) The government shall not show bias towards or against any person on the basis of his race, color, ethnicity, or previous condition of slavery or servitude.
I’ve often heard counselors (and counselor-issued pamphlets) decree that there are two types of emotional stress: eustress and distress. Eustress is good, and distress is bad.
Pardon me, but that is not how most people define the word “stress”. When we say “stress”, we’re talking about something bad. We’re talking about a negative emotion or mental state, often brought about by overwork. People simply don’t say “I’m stressed” with a smile. Nobody gets up one day and decides “I need more stress in my life”. They may want more excitement, but they never want more stress. In fact, the word “eustress” doesn’t seem to exist outside the aforementioned counselors’ pamphlets.
I’ve tried asking people how stress could be a positive thing. They always respond by offering an example of a stressful situation which is nevertheless positive. For instance, raising a child can be stressful, but also very rewarding. But this doesn’t address my point. Raising a child may be a positive thing, and also stressful, but the stress itself is not positive. If you could lessen the stress of child-rearing without changing the rewards, that would be a good thing. Similarly, studying for a test may be stressful, but it may also get you a good grade. If the good grade is worth more to you than the stress, then that’s a net positive. (Watch out, though.) But if you could study more efficiently, such that you got the same grade while experiencing less stress, that would be a good idea. The stress itself is a negative, even if it happens to be connected to something positive.
The only way that stress can have a positive form is if the word “stress” is defined as a synonym of “activity” (or something similar). In that case, yes, there is positive activity and there is negative activity. But when most people use the term “stress”, they are referring strictly to a negative entity.
If you want teach
It is not necessary to know everything
It is only necessary to know more than your pupils
I’d like to see someone build an online datacenter with the following qualities:
- State-of-the-art technology
- Running entirely open-source software (hopefully open hardware too)
- Located in a country with strong free speech protections (Probably Iceland, assuming the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative works as advertised)
- Accessible by a custom top-level domain
- Run by a non-profit organization
This datacenter would be a public archive for various files in the public interest, including:
- The entire Internet Archive
- The contents of all the various Wikimedia projects (such as Wikipedia, Wikinews etc.)
- The contents of Project Gutenberg and similar projects
- Various public documents from governments and related organizations
- All documents released by WikiLeaks
- Other documents in the public interest
(It might be wise to leave out the WikiLeaks contributions until the datacenter is already up and running, to avoid controversy.)
I’d also like to see a complimentary program for end users to install on their machines, allowing them to automatically download parts of the datacenter’s data and share it with others. With enough users dedicating enough hard drive space, the entire set of data would be mirrored in the user-created cloud. Thus, even if the datacenter was destroyed, the data would still be accessible via the aforementioned program.
Just to make it a bit more thorough:
Section 1. Slavery and similar forms of involuntary servitude are abolished throughout the United States, and all places subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Neither the federal government of the United States nor any of the state governments of the several states shall allow slavery to exist with their respective jurisdictions.
Section 2. No person may be bought, sold, owned or traded in a manner which is similar to slavery.
Section 3. If a person who is legally considered to be a slave in a foreign territory passes into the territory of the United States, he shall not be considered as a slave under the laws of the United States, and the government shall not attempt to return him to his previous condition of servitude.
Section 4. Involuntary servitude may be authorized by law as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, provided that the nature and duration of such servitude is reasonable considering the crime at hand.
Section 5. The government may force persons into involuntary servitude for military purposes or other purposes, provided that the following conditions are met: (1) The needs of the nation must be sufficiently dire to warrant such servitude, (2) The nature and duration of the servitude of any individual must be reasonable considering the needs of the nation and the availability of other persons who might be made to do the same work, (3) All such individuals shall be paid fair compensation for their service, though in the case of a shortage of funds congress may authorize part of this compensation to be paid in the form of debt, which shall be redeemed after a reasonable period of time.
Section 6. Congress shall have the power to enforce all parts of this Constitution by appropriate legislation, including the present amendment and any further amendments that may follow.
–
If you look at the original amendment, it appears to outlaw the military draft. This is one of those cases where the intention of the authors is so obvious that the courts have decided to abide by that rather than the literal meaning of the text. My version is more clear. (Though I’m no fan of the draft, actually)
I also expanded the “appropriate legislation” clause so we don’t have to repeat it in every amendment.
Often, to solve your problems, you have to talk about them. Express your dilemma, ask others for advice etc..
But sometimes there comes a point when talking about the problem gets in the way of actually solving it.
Sometimes it’s like a man who is hungry, and he says “I am hungry”, but once he finds some food he needs to stop talking about his hunger for a moment so he can simply eat the food.
This concept applies to thinking about problems as well as discussing them. But again, this only applies in certain circumstances.
I am a brony. I’m also a fan of Doctor Who. I’ve joined an excellent group of people who are creating a radioplay called Doctor Whooves Adventures. I am a writer and voice actor for the project. Some of our work is listed below.
Shorts:
Full Episodes:
Legal Disclaimer: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro. Doctor Who is the property of the BBC. Neither I nor any other member of Pony in a Box Productions claims ownership over the characters, music, or related copyrighted works of others. We create our radioplay under the doctrine of Fair Use and similar legal provisions.
This is a true story I heard from a friend.
An airplane had been traveling for a while and had nearly reached its destination, when suddenly a large storm arose. The storm blocked the path to the runway, and the pilot was forced to fly in circles while he waited for the storm to clear up. As time passed, the passengers became increasingly agitated. They started speculating that the pilot was being overly cautious. Finally the pilot got on the intercom and announced “Look, if anyone wants to come up to the cockpit and explain to me how we can land without getting caught in the storm, I’m open to suggestions.”
Sure enough, three passengers took him up on the offer. When they arrived in the cockpit, the pilot calmly explained the situation and the various instruments. He showed them where the storm was on radar, and how it blocked the runway. He explained what would happen if they tried to fly through the storm.
The three passengers left the cockpit feeling a bit humble, and explained to the other passengers that there was nothing they could do but wait. Everyone calmed down a little, and eventually the plane was able to land.
Note the actions of the pilot. He was faced with passengers who questioned his judgment, despite the fact that he had years of experience and they had none at all. But instead of simply snapping at everyone and agitating them further, the pilot tried another approach. He invited them up to the cockpit and explained the situation. He allowed the passengers to offer their advice, even though he knew there was little chance they would have any good ideas. By doing this, the pilot showed the passengers respect. And by showing them respect, he eased their stress and agitation. The passengers learned to trust the pilot, because he had been so open with them.
The pilot displayed more than technical skills; he showed people skills as well. It’s all too easy to remember the former and neglect the latter.
In works of fiction, “canon” refers to things that are true within the fictional universe.
Some fictional universes span several items of media created by different people. For instance, a popular movie may lead to a tie-in book series. These various items often contradict each other, leading to disputes about what is canon and what is not.
To resolve this, I present the Canon Class System. It’s a a 6-point scale, ranging from A to F. If two items contradict each other, the item with the higher canon level is considered the (fictional) truth.
Class A is the highest level, reserved for the most authoritative works
Classes B, C and D are increasingly dubious
Class E is for non-canon items which are still somehow related to the canon
Class F is for non-canon items which are completely unrelated to the canon
For example, Star Wars canon might be arranged like this:
Class A: The Star Wars movies
Class B: Star Wars novels
Class C: Star Wars video games
Class D: Random notes and comments from the creators of Star Wars
Class E: Star Wars fanfiction
Class F: My Little Pony
A few notes:
- The example here is just one possible way to organize the Star Wars canon. George Lucas might organize it some other way.
- There’s no need to group things by media type. You could say, for instance, “All the official novels are Class B, except such-and-such novel, which is Class D”.
- Any item can be split into pieces, as in “Most of this movie is Class A, but the ending is Class B”
- Everyone can create their own classification according to this scale, i.e. “Star Wars according to George Lucas” vs. “Star Wars according to Bob Smitherson”. Different people can declare different items to have different levels of canon within their respective scales. (For instance, Bob Smitherson might declare the original Star Wars trilogy to be Class A and the prequel trilogy to be Class E.) If a franchise is rebooted, there will be separate classifications for the original material and the rebooted material. (Each of these will probably rank as Class E within the other’s system.)
- You can create subclasses by adding pluses and minuses, as in “This book is B+ canon, but this other book is B- canon”.
- Individual statements can be assigned levels. For instance, “Luke Skywalker became a Jedi” would be Class A canon.
Making art is like making love; even the most amateur attempt can be thrilling.
–Julia Cameron (paraphrased)
Have you ever noticed that grown-ups don’t play tag?
Kids can play checkers, and adults can play checkers.
Kids can play baseball, and adults can play baseball (though they typically don’t unless they’re getting paid for it.)
Kids can play tag, but adults do not play tag.
There are some games which tend to get boring as we grow up, because of our increased knowledge and experience. For instance, tick-tack-toe is less fun once you’ve figured out the perfect strategy. But I don’t see why the game of tag should get any less fun with age. It seems to be a cultural rule that adults don’t play tag, and the rule doesn’t seem to make sense.
Wikipedia can be thought of as a microcosm of the world at large:
It’s inhabited by many people with various backgrounds.
Nearly anyone can make changes.
Some people seem determined to make everything as unpleasant as possible, but they’re a small minority.
Most people just want things to change for the better.
There are innumerable disputes about which changes to make.
Sometimes it feels like these disputes go on forever, with no real progress or resolution.
But, in the long run, consensus emerges.
In the long run, things get better.
Because that’s what we set out to do.
And we’re the ones who make things happen.
Many people have differing beliefs regarding the Question of God, concerning which Gods exist (if any), what their qualities are, and what we humans ought to do in response.
Personally, I don’t think there is any good reason to believe in a God. I think that a limited God is more plausible than a perfect (all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful) God, but for the moment I don’t see a reason to believe in any gods at all, whether limited or not. Perhaps I will change my mind someday, perhaps not.
In the meantime, I’d like to point out that the Question of God is not always the most important question. Sometimes it’s best to focus on something else for awhile, and basically ignore the fact that we have different beliefs about God.
Let me draw a parallel with physics: Isaac Newton codified what we call Newtonian Physics. This system of physical laws does a very good job of describing and predicting how things move about in our day-to-day lives. Many years later, scientists discovered that Newtonian Physics contains many subtle flaws, and it doesn’t perfectly match up with our observations of the universe. Albert Einstein then crafted Einstenian Physics, which fixes most of the flaws in Newton’s system and provides a better description of the universe.
For most day-to-day activities, Newtonian Physics is 99% accurate. Einsteinian physics is more accurate, but not necessarily to a degree that most people would care about. Newtonian Physics is trustworthy except in extreme circumstances, such as when objects approach the speed of light. The Newtonian model does have one big advantage over the Einstenian model: it’s easier to do the math. So when you’re dealing with day-to-day events and you don’t care about perfect accuracy, you can save a lot of time by working with Newtonian Physics.
As I understand it, atheism is like Einsteinian Physics; it is the best answer we have yet to the Question of God. (Though there’s always the chance of new discoveries, within both physics and religion.) But some forms of religion are like Newtonian Physics; they’re 99% accurate for most day-to-day circumstances and decisions.
Note that this is only for some forms of religion, not all forms. Obviously there are cults out there. Obviously there are people who use religion to justify prejudices or bad decisions. But consider these people:
- They believe in a God, but they’re aren’t quick to interpret random events as divine signs or signals
- They believe that God can cure sickness, but they make full use of modern medicine
- They believe that people should be compassionate towards one another, because God said so
- They have no strong prejudices against any group of people, because God created all types of people
- They understand that people of other religions, or no religion, can still be moral and compassionate
- They want non-believers to convert to their religion, but they don’t insist on it
- They accept most of the findings of modern science, with the exception of a few theories which don’t have much impact on their day-to-day lives anyway
There are a lot of religious people who fit this mold. I’m friends with several of them. I used to be one myself, before I converted to Humanism. I put it to you that this sort of religion is like Newtonian Physics: it’s flawed, but it’s pretty good. (And like Newtonian Physics, religion is easier to understand than atheism, at least for some people.) I don’t think that combating this sort of religion is a high priority. Sometimes there are more important things to talk about.
It runs both ways, actually. I imagine the theists I just mentioned will largely view the situation in reverse: that I’m the one with a Newtonian view and they have the Einsteinian view. But we’ll still agree that, in most cases, the differences between our views are not tremendously important.
If I found myself working with some of these theists on solving World Hunger or whatever, I hope that we wouldn’t interrupt ourselves by constantly debating the Question of God. There are more pressing matters at hand.
The human mind is very complex, and can be divided and labeled in many different ways. One paradigm I’m particularly fond of is called “Upper Mind and Lower Mind”.
Here are a couple examples to distinguish the terms:
Example #1
Look at your hand. Take a moment to move all the fingers, the wrist etc.. There are many distinct muscles in the hand, and you’ve just used several of them. Now I ask you: How many muscles are there, exactly? How many muscles did you use just a moment ago? Don’t look it up in a book; that would be cheating. In fact, don’t even look at your hand. Close your eyes. Concentrate really hard and count the muscles in your hand.
You can’t, can you? You can make a guess, of course. You can figure that the number of muscles is more than 1 and less than 1000, but you can’t make an accurate count just by thinking about it. Which is odd, really, because you just used those muscles a moment ago. Clearly there’s some part of you that knows how to talk to each muscle, send it instructions etc., but you don’t really know how it works. In a way, your brain knows how many muscles are in the hand, but you don’t know. Or, since “you” actually reside in the brain to begin with, it’s better to say that the Lower Mind speaks to the muscles, and the Upper Mind (aka you) only provides basic instructions. The Upper Mind thinks something simple like “touch my thumb and index finger together”, and the Lower Mind handles the details of what exact instructions should be sent to which muscles. The Upper Mind doesn’t know how many muscles there are simply because it doesn’t need to know. (It can find out, of course. You can go look it up in a book or something. But you don’t know it instinctively, the way your Lower Mind knows it.)
It’s like saving some phone numbers on your cell phone, and then always making calls by tapping someone’s name rather than typing the number. If you decide to rely on your phone like this, you can call people without even remembering their phone numbers. Similarly, the Upper Mind tells the Lower Mind to do things, without necessarily knowing how it happens.
Example #2:
The intense fear of spiders is called “arachnophobia”. Suppose there is a man with arachnophobia who knows that he has arachnophobia. He knows that his fear is unfounded, because most spiders pose no danger to humans. In particular, he knows that mere photograph of a spider poses no danger at all. He consciously believes these things, and he can express and justify these beliefs.
Nevertheless, he has arachnophobia. So when he looks at a photograph of a spider, he panics. He knows that this panic is unfounded, and he desires to stop panicking immediately. But he panics nonetheless.
In this example, the man’s Upper Mind has no fear of spiders, but the Lower Mind has an intense fear of spiders. Note that this is not always the case with arachnophobes; it is possible for a person to believe that even a photograph of a spider is inherently dangerous (via supernatural effects or whatever). It is also possible for a person to believe that such photographs are dangerous not because of inherent properties, but because of one’s own arachnophobia. But in that case there is still a distinction; the Lower Mind thinks “Danger! Panic! Run!”, while the Upper Mind thinks “Oh no, this photo will trigger my arachnophobia!”. The distinction is important, because if the Lower Mind understood that the only danger was mental, it would be able to calm down and thus solve its own problem.
The process of curing arachnophobia is largely the process of the Upper Mind telling the Lower Mind to stop worrying about spiders, until the Lower Mind finally accepts the message.
–
The Upper Mind is basically “you”, and the Lower Mind is a set of mental resources which you utilize for mental purposes.
The Lower Mind is the realm of habit and repeated patterns. Let’s say you’re learning something new, like how to ride a bicycle. When you begin learning, you have to do everything consciously (with the Upper Mind). Repeat this often enough, and the Lower Mind starts to see a pattern. It starts implementing the pattern (as per your instructions), until it’s learned enough that you can finally rely on it. At this point, the Upper Mind is free to send down basic instructions like “Ride the bicycle and don’t fall over”, and the Lower Mind will do it. This frees up the Upper Mind to do something else, such as talk to a fellow bike-rider.
The Upper Mind is like a person, and the Lower Mind is like a house. The person lives inside the house, and is affected by the house. (For instance, you can’t walk through walls). But the person is not controlled by the house; fundamentally they can make nearly any adjustment. They can rearrange the furniture, paint the walls, even remodel the whole thing. They can knock down walls and put up new ones, etc. etc.. All of this takes time, and effort, and skill, and maybe some outside help, but it can be done.
So imagine you go into your kitchen to get some toast, only to find that there’s a wall right in the middle of the kitchen, blocking your path. Maybe it’s a firm solid wall and you simply can’t get the toast, or maybe it’s a shoddy partially-built wall that you can climb over or push through. In any case, the wall is stupid. It doesn’t serve any useful purpose; it just makes it harder to get the toast. So you think to yourself “I’m going to change this!“. And hopefully you do.
A wide variety of mental/emotional problems can be thought of this way: Something has gone wrong with the Lower Mind, and somehow you’ve got to fix it. Instead of having a physical wall in your kitchen which dissuades you from getting some toast that you want, there’s a mental wall in your mind which dissuades you from thinking some thoughts that you want to think. (Or conversely, the mind keeps focusing on thoughts you’d rather not think.)
- A depressed person, for instance, has trouble thinking of positive things. Time and time again, everything adopts some sort of negative spin.
- An arachnophobe doesn’t want to panic at the sight of spiders, but the Lower Mind insists on it.
- A girl in an abusive relationship may want to leave the relationship, but she has trouble puzzling out just what she would do exactly and how she would cope, and instead she’s consumed with fear etc..
- A man working a job that he hates may have trouble focusing on how to get out of the job and find something better (rather than just complaining about it). Even if he has opportunities, he may have trouble recognizing that they exist.
People don’t often distinguish Upper Mind and Lower Mind, which leads to problems. For instance, someone suffering from procrastination might really want to do X, but then they don’t do X (despite having an obvious opportunity), and when asked why they didn’t do X they may respond “I just didn’t get around to it” or “Because I’m lazy”. What they should do is recognize that something has gone wrong here; they should think to themselves “I wanted to do X and I had the opportunity to do X, but I didn’t actually do X. What’s wrong with my brain that prevents me from doing things that I want to do?” They can then begin a process of fixing their own Lower Mind. Such a process many involve counseling, or reading about the subject, or any number of things. (It’s possible that X was a bad goal to begin with, in which case the main problem is in the Upper Mind, but I’ll leave that aside for now.)
By the way, I recognize that the brain is not literally divided into exactly two sections. You could just as well talk about an Upper Mind, Lower Mind and Middle Mind, if you wanted to. I just think it’s simpler talking about 2 things versus 3 or 4 or 5. Similarly, you could talk about “Upper Mind regarding Topic A” vs. “Upper Mind regarding Topic B”, or whatever.
To some degree, the terms “Upper Mind” and “Lower Mind” are similar to the terms “conscious” and “subconscious”, respectively. But I use my own terms to avoid confusion. (When the Lower Mind panics, for instance, the person is probably consciously aware of this panic, but it’s still the Lower Mind that’s panicking.)
This is an imperfect paradigm, but in my experience it is very useful paradigm. It has helped me address a number of my own problems, and the problems of others.
In America, in the suburbs at least, everything depends on the car.
We use our cars for everything. We drive them to work. We drive them to the grocery store. We drive them to barber shops and movie theaters and our friends’ houses. We can hardly leave the house without using a car.
This is bad, for a number of reasons.
First, nobody gets any exercise. Americans are fatter than just about any other nation on earth, and a big reason behind that is that we spend the whole day sitting down. We’re sitting in our cars as we go to work, we’re sitting at work, we’re sitting on the way back from work, and we’re sitting in front of the TV at night. The only way we get serious exercise is by going to the gym or something. But that’s not built-in, and so we often neglect the gym. Compare this to the Japanese, who use bicycles far more often than we do. They bike to the train station, the grocery store, or a neighbor’s house. This exercise is built-in, and as a result the Japanese get a lot more exercise. (And remember that exercise isn’t always about weight loss; a good walk or bike ride can be good for your mental health too.)
Second, it poisons the air. In the long run, all those car fumes increase the chance of lung problems (such as asthma or lung cancer) quite significantly.
Third, it contributes to global warming (with the very same fumes I just mentioned). In the long run, this causes its own set of problems.
Fourth, it’s expensive. The price of gas is bad enough by itself, but don’t forget the price of insurance and maintenance and license fees and everything else that comes with the car. When I lived in Japan for six months, I found it very convenient not having to pay any of that. A good bicycle only costs $100.
Fifth, it’s socially isolating. This is something you might not realize at first, but it’s true. When you’re in a car, you’re surrounded by metal and glass. You can’t easily talk to someone on the outside. More to the point, you’re typically moving too fast to talk to anyone anyway. The result is that’s it’s hard to meet people spontaneously when you’re always driving. When you’re walking, you can meet people at random. You say hi to them, whether they be friends or strangers. You might even stop and have a long conversation. In a car, this is much harder. Of course you can talk to anyone in the same car as you, but that’s something that has to be planned.
Sixth, it’s physically isolating. You can’t feel the wind around you; you can’t feel the subtleties of the ground beneath your feet. For me at least, there something better about feeling these things directly, at least sometimes. Perhaps I spend too much time in front of a computer, and I need reconnect with my physical self once in awhile.
I’m not saying cars are evil; obviously they have many good qualities. But I think that we rely on cars too much, and we suffer subtle harms as a result. The trouble is that we’ve locked ourselves in to some extent. Relying on the car, we Americans built everything too far apart from everything else. The closest grocery store is a mile from my house, for instance. In Japan it was much closer. Many of us work jobs that require long commutes for which there is insufficient public transportation. It’s hard to avoid using cars all the time.
But if we want to, we can start changing our situation. We can look for ways to use cars less often. I think it’s worth our while to do so.
–
(post updated 27 April 2012)
When I first went to Japan, I stayed at the dorms with other students. I had my own private room, but I shared a kitchen and showers with several other students. After I graduated I remained in Japan for a few months, and I started living in what the Japanese call a “Guest House”. Once again I had a small private room, and I shared a kitchen and showers with several others.
I loved that style of living. I loved how the space was used so efficiently. I loved that the rent was so cheap. I loved that I could be alone whenever I wanted to, but that I could also interact with others whenever I wanted to. I loved sharing meals with strangers who became friends. I loved the little comings and goings, greeting people as they entered the house and being greeted myself when I returned from somewhere.
I suppose there was less privacy than you would find in a normal apartment (or a house), but I didn’t care. And yes, my room was tiny, but I didn’t care about that either. I don’t need a lot of space; saving money is much more important to me than having my own kitchen or living room. The more money I save, the less I have to work. The less I work, the more free time I have. I absolutely love having free time.
And again, beyond the question of time and money, I loved the social element. I feel that, in apartments and especially houses, it’s hard to get to know your neighbors. I live in the suburbs now, in a house, and there seems to be no built-in way for me to meet people. We’re isolated from each other. We hardly leave our houses except by car, and cars do not afford much opportunity for spontaneous meetings or interactions. (In Japan, people use bicycles and trains much more often.) There are many houses in my neighborhood, but I can only name a handful of their occupants.
I’d like to live in a dorm again, like I did in Japan.
Of course, other people may prefer standard apartments and houses. Maybe they need more space than me. Maybe they’ve overcome the social hurdles that vex me (which is a matter of culture and habit as well as physical living arrangements.) Even in Japan, most people live in apartments and houses rather than Guest Houses. But personally I’d like to try living in a dorm. The trouble is that I can’t find one.
Americans accept the idea of dorms when it comes to colleges and boarding schools. Beyond that, the concept more-or-less vanishes. When I was in Tokyo I found a nearby Guest House in less than a week. In America, such facilities are far more rare, and I’ve had trouble finding anything.
I wonder if there are others who share my feelings, or would share my feelings if they first tried dorm-style living for awhile. Perhaps there’s a huge untapped market here. A potential parallel: Japanese comic books were once exclusive to Japan, but in the last few decades they’ve found a following in the American market. Most Americans are still uninvolved, but nevertheless the comic books are available for the fans who want to buy them. Perhaps there could be a similar cultural transfer for ideas on living arrangements. Perhaps dorm-style facilities will start cropping up here and there, and as more people learn about the concept there will be more of a market.
In any case, I hope people learn to think more deliberately about the living arrangement they want for themselves, rather than just going with what’s popular.
The movie camera was invented over 100 years ago.
If I had been alive at that time, I think I would have predicted that stage theater would die out within 100 years. Why bother doing the same performance over and over when you can just record it once and play the recording? Movies are more convenient than live performances.
Movies have come a long way in the last century. They have a rich artistic history, and they achieve many special effects that stage theater simply can’t match. Movies are available almost everywhere, including the comfort of your own home.
And yet, here we are. Stage theater endures. Broadway still teems with big productions. Schools and other community organizations still put on plays and musicals. For various reasons, stage theater simply hasn’t died out. It has not been destroyed by its modern counterpart.
Whenever you feel that the world is changing too fast, remember this. Many things that you expect to vanish will actually endure.
I’ve sometimes heard this phrase:
There is nothing new under the sun.
Mainly I’ve heard it in the context of fiction and art. The idea is that everything is somehow derived from its predecessors. The phrase bugs me, because it implies that nobody ever really creates anything.
But every new creation is, in fact, new. Even if it’s inspired by something that came previously, it’s not the exact same thing as whatever came previously. The fact that Star Wars incorporates old ideas about heroes and villains does not change the fact that Star Wars was new; before George Lucas there was nothing in the world exactly like Star Wars.
The only way to make new stories look the same as old stories is to have a fuzzy perspective: “Here’s a story about a hero who defeats a villain. Oh wait, here’s a previous story about a hero who defeats a villain. Well, I guess they’re the same story, then! There is nothing new under the sun.” Different things only seem similar if we ignore the details. (And besides, there are stories without heroes and villains.)
In fact, you could take the philosophical view and state that everything changes in every instant. Molecules keep shifting around, etc. etc.. Most of these changes are insignificant, but they’re technically still happening.
So in a sense, it’s equally accurate to say:
There is nothing old under the sun.
Affiliate Marketing works like this:
Somebody is trying to sell a product online. He sets up a program where people can sign up to help market (i.e. advertise) his product. Each person puts up ads or otherwise recommends the product, and they put up links for potential customers to click on. But these are special links; each link contains a digital id code which is assigned to the advertiser. When a customer clicks on the link and gets to the product page, the person selling the product can tell whose link the customer clicked on. If the customer then decides to buy the product, the relevant advertiser gets paid some percentage of the profits.
In this way, advertisers are paid according to how many sales they generate.
Affiliate Marketing is a big thing online, and many people I respect have made a lot of money with it. But I’m troubled by ethical questions. A whole lot of affiliate marketing is deceptive. (See this post for some examples.) Since the advertiser gets paid according to how many sales he makes, he’s encouraged to praise the product as much as possible. Many affiliate marketers praise crappy products. Obviously, this is bad for the customer.
There’s an obvious antidote for this: don’t praise crappy products. Don’t put up an affiliate link unless you really believe in the product you’re selling. Avoid any manner of bias, and communicate all the relevant facts to your audience. That solves the ethical problem, doesn’t it?
Well, maybe. The thing that bugs me is the possibility that you might be biased without consciously realizing that you’re biased. If you want to make money, and you know that more sales will bring in more money….isn’t there a chance you’ll over-praise a few products?
On the other hand, maybe that risk is sufficiently small that it’s ok to use affiliate links, so long as you really try to be honest about it.
*Sigh* I’m not sure either way.
As of this post, Sonicsuns at Random contains zero affiliate links. I might use affiliate links in the future, but if I do then every affiliate link will be labeled as an affiliate link. And I’ll probably also include a non-affiliate link that goes to the same product page.
I love that feeling
when you’ve lost something
but you don’t need it right now
and you know that, soon enough, you’ll find it again
without even trying
I love the lack of anxiety
in a situation where you might otherwise expect it
Some religions, such as Christianity, posit the existence of a perfect God who is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful.
This leads to the awkward question of how a perfect God could allow innocent people to suffer.
It’s one thing to say that people have Free Will, and they must face the consequences of their own actions. That, at least, seems fair. But plenty of people suffer in some way due to no fault of their own. Sometimes infant children get diseases and die. Why does God allow that? He’s all-loving, so of course he wants to help the children. He’s all-knowing, so of course he’s aware of their plight. And he’s all-powerful, so it should be easy for him to cure the disease instantaneously. And yet, infant children still die sometimes. Why is that?
It would be so much easier on the theists if they just posited a belief in a limited God. Suppose there is a God who is definitely all-loving, possibly all-knowing, and definitely not all-powerful. God is far more powerful than any mere human, but his power is limited in some manner. The exact limits of his power are unknown; he can take action in some situations but not others.
This is much easier to work with. Now, every time an infant dies you can say that God wanted to help, but he couldn’t help, because of the mysterious limits on his power. And when a sickly infant recovers from a disease, you can say that God was able to help in that situation, and did so.
Perhaps this limitation comes in the form of a Devil, who has roughly the same amount power as God. (This is neat because you can grant God an “infinite” amount of power, only to be a opposed by a “similarly infinite” Devil.) The two of them are constantly at war with each other, trying to make the world better or worse. Humans are in the middle, and each person can exercise their own Free Will to assist either God or the Devil at any moment.
A perfect God would be wonderful, I’m sure. But considering the world that we live in, a limited God just makes more sense.
–
(post updated 16 May 2012)
To decide on what to believe, you should consider the available evidence. On some matters, you have access to very good evidence, such as large-scale scientific studies which have been repeated and confirmed by independent sources. On other matters, you only have access to less-reliable evidence, such as the opinions of non-experts. On some matters, the only evidence you can come up with is a vague internal hunch which doesn’t seem to be based on anything.
The available evidence may change, of course. You may have a hunch that the truth is A, and discover later a reliable study which proves that the truth is B. At this point you should update your beliefs. But in the meantime, before the study proving B is actually conducted, it’s quite reasonable to continue believing A. Even though your belief is based on nothing more than a hunch, a hunch is still better than nothing. (And nothing, at this point, is the only evidence in favor of B. Before the study is conducted, you have no way of knowing in advance that it will conclude B and not A; the study counts for nothing until it has actually been properly conducted.)
Suppose you were lost in a desert somewhere at night, and you wanted to head North. Suppose you lacked any compass or map, but you had a hunch that such-and-such direction was probably North. This hunch isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. There’s a chance that the hunch is based on some old memories of when you turned in which direction, or perhaps you’ve subconsciously recognized some of the star patterns above. In any case, you know that the human brain generally aims towards accuracy, at least moreso than a perfectly-random coin flip or whatever.
In this situation, it would be ridiculous to point somewhere and say “I know with certainty that this way is North”. But it would be reasonable to point somewhere and say “Based on the evidence available to me at the present time, this way is more likely to be North than any other way.” And thus it would be reasonable to start walking in that direction.
(In a realistic scenario, you might want to conserve your energy and wait for sunrise, but pretend that’s not an option for now. The point is how to figure out which way is North even before you have access to any additional information.)
This concept comes up in philosophy.
On the question of “What makes people happy?”, we have a fairly good scientific approach. We can prove, for instance, that people with adequate food are generally happier than people who are starving to death.
On the questions of “Does the universe has some sort of purpose?” and “Is human happiness fundamentally better in the grand scheme of things compared to human sadness?”, we do not (yet) have a clear scientific approach. But we still have something on which to base our beliefs. We have, at the very least, a hunch that happiness is better than sadness in the grand scheme of things. We also have millions of other humans to consult whose hunches are similar to our own. (And if you already believe that life is fundamentally better than non-life, you can point to the fact that happier people tend to live longer, etc.) This sort of stuff is the best evidence we have yet uncovered to answer these big questions. Thus, there’s nothing wrong with believing that “happiness is better than sadness”. Happiness probably is better than sadness; quit getting hung up on the fact that we don’t yet have a double-blind study to prove it. Our collective intuition is still something.
Some will say that the hunch is the byproduct of evolution, and is therefore invalid. But since when is evolution automatically wrong? Evolution gave many creatures the instinct that touching fire will result in injury. And you know what? Creatures that touch fire really do suffer injury as a result. And besides, many of our modern ideas aren’t instinctive at all. We are humans, and we move beyond instinct on a regular basis.
Some will say that this entire discussion about hunches is pointless, because we already do posses evidence, more convincing than a mere hunch, which supports the idea that happiness is better than sadness. That may be true – I won’t get into that right now – but even if we did have nothing more than a hunch to go on, that hunch would still be worth something.
This isn’t like some drug which hasn’t yet been proven to work. In the case of drugs, we know that the majority of random substances will cause harm to the human body if ingested. Thus, the default position on drugs is “probably won’t work”, until some form of evidence proves otherwise. (We could get into a long debate here about how much evidence you should wait for, and whether current governmental regulations are currently too lax or too strict, but I’ll leave that aside.)
There’s no reason I know of to think that believing “happiness is better than sadness” will have some ill effect. Quite the contrary, I think that believing “sadness is better than happiness” or “happiness and sadness are of equal value” would have the harmful effect of dissuading a person from seeking happiness. And I have reason to believe that happiness is good because, again, that grand collective hunch of ours.
Yes, there’s a chance that someday we’ll discover some better evidence which proves that we ought to pursue something other than our current concept of happiness. There’s also a chance that any further evidence we discover will simply reinforce our current beliefs. In the meantime, we should use the evidence we have.
Follow this line too long and you’ll get stuck in philosofog. The point is this:
- A hunch is still better than nothing.
- We have, at the very least, a collective hunch that happiness is fundamentally better than sadness.
- We do not posses any evidence which is more valid that the aforementioned hunch which supports a different conclusion on the question of happiness versus sadness.
- Therefore, there really is a logical reason to believe that happiness is fundamentally better than sadness, and that we should pursue collective happiness.
Unlike most of my peers, I try to respect copyright law.
This is surprisingly difficult.
I stay away from notorious copyright-infringement sites like The Pirate Bay. I have a torrent downloader program but I use it very rarely, and then only for legitimate purposes (such as downloading the latest version of Ubuntu.) But I do browse YouTube, which I know has strict copyright-enforcement mechanisms. Copyright owners can make claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and have videos taken down. From everything I’ve heard, YouTube errs on the side of over-enforcing the rules. Many major copyright owners purposefully put some of their content on YouTube.
At this point, I think I’m doing a reasonable job of respecting copyright law. Still, there are questions. Sometimes I’ll see a video with a song or a clip from a movie, and I’m not sure if it was uploaded by the original owner or not. And even if it wasn’t uploaded by the owner, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s illegal. It’s quite possible the owner granted permission to the uploader; how would I know? I have to trust YouTube to make that call.
If I see that some video is up on YouTube with a scene from a movie, and it’s been up for 3 years and it’s received 200,000 views and apparently hasn’t been taken down yet, can I just assume that the copyright owner is ok with it? What if it’s been up for a shorter period of time, or has fewer views?
Maybe I should just adopt the simple rule of “If it’s on YouTube, I’m allowed to watch it.”
But what if I know that similar videos have been taken down in the past? On the other hand, what if I’ve heard that those takedowns were illegitimate? I’ve heard many reports of someone impersonating a copyright owner and emailing a takedown request to YouTube, which then assumed the request was legitimate and took down the video (at least temporarily). I have never heard of the opposite situation, where YouTube assumes that a legitimate request is fake.
Last year I started following the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The show is owned by Hasbro, which demonstrated awareness of the fans, and surely had to be aware that the episodes were available on YouTube. Word among the fans was that Hasbro had tacitly approved of YouTube viewings by simply refusing to issue takedown requests. When some videos were eventually taken down, we believed that this was the result of trolls impersonating Hasbro, especially because at least one of the videos was formally taken down in the name of “Habsro”, a non-existent company. At no point did Hasbro issue a statement on it’s website or whatever asking us to stop watching the videos on YouTube. Fans conducted interviews with some of the show’s creators, and none of them asked us to stop the YouTube viewings either.
But eventually we learned that Hasbro was taking down episodes from YouTube. They also issued a Cease and Desist order against a website that had been hosting the episodes for download. It’s still unclear if it’s illegal to simply watch the videos on YouTube, and in the case of uploading videos it’s unclear if there are penalties to face beyond simply being banned from the site. Nevertheless, I realized that the copyright owner of the show did not want me to watch the videos on YouTube. Thus, I purchased every episode on iTunes, even the ones I had already seen and didn’t particularly plan to watch again.
Still, it’s hard knowing what to do sometimes. Every time I walk into someone’s house, if there’s music playing in the background, I have no idea if that music was legally purchased or illegally pirated. Is it my moral duty to go find out, each and every time? Or is that “above and beyond the call of duty”? I’m thinking the latter; I can’t police every action made by my friends.
On more than one occasion, I have been invited to watch a movie with a friend, and I assumed this was a legitimate DVD, and I found out it was actually pirated. On more than one occasion I have gone out and purchased the DVD after the fact, not because I intended to ever view it but because I wanted to be sure I was respecting copyright and rewarding the copyright owners. Am I morally obligated to do this? Or is that really something for my friends to do, and I shouldn’t bother making up for their failures? But then, if I discover that a movie is pirated halfway through, am I obligated to leave the room?
Several years ago I found a great website selling DVDs, and I purchased several. Eventually I learned that entire website was a pirate operation, which surprised me because everything looked professional and legitimate. I refused to watch the pirated DVDs again.
Another problem is the question of Fair Use. It is established in United States law that portions of copyrighted works can be copied and reused without permission in certain circumstances. The problem is that these circumstances are not perfectly spelled out. For instance, there is a TV show called Yu-Gi-Oh. There is an internet show called Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series, which consists mainly of footage from the original show, re-cut and re-voiced so as to form a parody of the original show. Parody is an activity protected by Fair Use, but it’s unclear just how much material can be re-used while falling under Fair Use doctrine. Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series has been banned from YouTube many times, and the episodes are now primarily available on a dedicated website. Rumor has it that the actual owners of Yu-Gi-Oh did not issue any takedown requests. (A side note: Yu-Gi-Oh is a Japanese show, and the Japanese are generally much more lax about copyright than Americans. Look up doujinshi sometime.) I spoke with the creator of The Abridged Series at a convention once, and he said he had not received a Cease and Desist order from the owners of Yu-Gi-Oh. He also said that he would obey any such order if he received one. I’ve not seen any statement from the owners of Yu-Gi-Oh denouncing The Abridged Series, so I’ve decided that I can watch it without ethical concerns. (And even if they did denounce it, there would still be the question of whether this denunciation was justified under the law.)
Do you see how complicated this is?
Returning to My Little Pony for a moment, fans have made many videos which mix elements of the show with other media, such as songs or other shows. For instance, the YouTube channel BeatleBrony hosts versions of Beatles songs with altered lyrics, performed by fans. I myself am helping to create an radioplay called Doctor Whooves Adventures, which mixes My Little Pony with Doctor Who. I trust that these activities are covered under Fair Use and/or the tacit permission of the owners. (These projects go up on YouTube and none of it has been taken down yet.)
Copyright law is messy. Sometimes it’s hard to know what exactly is legally, and/or ethically, permissible. But personally, almost all of my original creations are under a Creative Commons license, so you can download without worrying about it.
Nihilism, or at least certain forms of nihilism, states that everything is pointless.
But if nihilism is true and everything is pointless, then nihilism itself is also pointless.
Conversely, if nihilism is false and there is some sort of point to the universe, then nihilism itself remains pointless by virtue of being false.
I think it’s safe to say that nihilism is pointless. I think it’s safe to say that there is indeed a point to the universe, however fuzzy we may be about the details.
(As for my best guess about what the point of existence really is, I would say that we should pursue happiness instead of sadness, kindness instead of cruelty, and knowledge instead of ignorance. Maybe someday we’ll find something more important to aspire to, somehow, but in meantime I think these are good goals.)
A person who seeks solitude doesn’t necessarily want to be alone.
Maybe they just want to avoid the sorts of people they’ve been dealing with lately.
If they met another sort of person, or the people they knew started acting in different ways, maybe they would be quite happy to spend time with them.