If ignorance is bliss, should I be dafter to be happier?
I am a strong supporter of mental powers. Philosophy, argumentation, thinking in general. One might even argue emotions should be subdued by intelligence, as emotions do not obey the rules of logic. It is no secret that emotions fog things up, they always have and always will.
Then again, emotions are required for joy, for exuberance. They are emotions. This would indicate that emotions are an integral part of eudaemonia.
“If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us.” - Aristotle
But doing things as well as one is able to requires doing it with wit, with intelligence, with a sound mind. Pure effectiveness can only be improved upon using the brain to figure out better methods of doing something. A paradox arises, which properly explains why either extreme is utterly useless. But a golden middle has to exist, an optimal ratio between mind and heart. How far off from that optimal ratio is our general way of thinking, how to fix our thinking to allow complete happiness?
Then again, if ignorance is bliss, am I perhaps better off not knowing?
“The universe puts us in places where we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are is the right place and the right time. The pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born.” – J. Michael Straczynski
We make plans, sometimes far into the future. We believe that everything will turn out the way we want it to, or expect it to. We love it when our plans come together, but sometimes they do not, sometimes they simply refuse to give in to our hopes and dreams, they insist on making our lives more complicated despite our desire for simplicity.
One might ask if it is fate or karma that creates these obstacles in our path, that makes us trip and fall when we finally achieve a stable stride. There is not much else it could be but meaningless coincidence. That could be a hard medicine to swallow, to accept that our happiness and hope are so often ruined by pure chance that just happens to strike when we feel most hopeful. As if it were done out of spite.
Nevertheless we try to cope with these setbacks, to overcome the difficulties. Sometimes accept the new conditions, as difficult as it is to accept the death of long-lasted hope. It may feel as if our souls are being crushed by an unstoppable force, but we always get back on our feet and keep going. There is no point in surrender, only in trying again. We have to stand up and continue along our path of life, reluctance to do so would mean defeat, humiliation, and the death of our spirits. We must continue, as we have no other course of action. We need to go on, because we choose to.
Some possible definitions I came up with to get some useful books.
1. The purpose of life.
The purpose of life is to give each individual an opportunity to act according to one’s abilities in order to achieve personal mental satisfaction upon life’s end.
2. The essence of the Universe
The Universe is a bunch of huge objects kept together by non-existent ones.
3. The limits of human abilities
A human being can do whatever one really tries to. Very often people try to fail.
4. Faith
Faith is a torch that gives people the bravery to test the limits of one’s abilities even during the darkest of times.
5. Future
The future is the consequence of our present and past actions.
The one way I am willing to listen to One Direction. A lot. Don’t ask me why one of them rubs the piano.
Objects in space.
Whenever you watch a movie that has really cool fake laser weapons (such as the laser blazer), you get to see the oddest ways lasers can hit something. Generally, the laser hits an object and the object disappears (or shrinks or grows), but nothing around or behind it is affected. Even if the laser is a tiny one, the entire object is hit, instead of a small part of it that is actually being hit by the laser. It is a simple trick of movie magic, a trick that has caused few questions about its obvious fakery. Why is that, one may ask.
It is because the general way of thinking about space around us is object-based. We perceive panes of glass as whole objects, not as results of small grains of matter. The same goes for couches, bags, even trees. Even when we know the objects are multilayered, consist of many different substances, we still think of them as (relatively) large objects. A book is a book, not a collection of paper sheets, a tree is a tree, not a mess of bark and leaves
This is merely an example of how used our brains are to simplifying things, generalizing everything and ignoring unique traits. For us, people are very similar and, excluding different looks and sounds, practically indistinguishable. Sure, there are small nuances that trigger interest or disinterest that we manage to recall about people, but nothing really deep. Very rarely do some people come along who we learn to know closely, their ambitions, logic of thinking, oddities of their sense of humour, detailed mannerisms, their logic-to-emotion ratio, even their mental connections. These are the few people we think about as abstract beings, something more than general people. These are the people we grow to care about.
“3. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.
4. Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.” – Sun Tzu
This applies very well to most situations, including political fights. The problem with Romney is that he is a businessman, he wants to lead the country as if it were an enterprise. There is nothing inherently bad about the plan as the things that make a business successful are the same things that make a country successful: happy employees and clients, motivation to contribute in the employer’s benefit, economic and political stability, innovation, you name it. The problem with it lies in the size – Romney wants to lead the United States, an enterprise the size and diversity never seen before. He would need very autonomous branch offices, even branch offices of branch offices, which would micromanage certain districts; he would need regional governments that have almost no limitations. Any constraints upon their operation decreases their effectiveness as every area is different, they should be governed differently. And then they have to be willing to work together, which is yet another big problem.
The difference between branch offices and local authorities is that the company’s head office is supposed to nurture the branch offices to make them as productive as possible. Since there is no play for power (or very little room for it), that is not a concern. In the case of local authorities is that the state has to limit them from growing out of hand. Anyone who becomes too influential will start hindering the free operation of the state.
“Half of them are your enemies and the other half are the kind that makes you prefer your enemies.” –YPM on regional governments
Regional governments are not like branch offices, you cannot appoint anyone you want to lead them. The governors are chosen by the people, and they fall into two very similar, yet violently conflicting parties. If each branch office has different aims, principles and ideals, managing the whole system from a central body becomes a fool’s quest. You would end up with a horrible case of Buridan’s donkey – instead of two stacks of hay you would have over fifty of them! And just one ass – the country – that is being drawn in every direction, never actually getting anywhere before dying.
“I mean just imagine if you put defence in the hands of local authorities. Give the local councils a hundred million each and ask them to defend themselves, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Russians, we’d have a civil war in three weeks!” – YPM
It rarely results in anything practical, but it often confuses the sprouts out of everyone involved in the debate. I’ve covered it before, and can yet again, as reasons are plentiful. I’ve covered the aspect of understanding others and simply asking ‘Why?’ about everything that one does not understand, it is an instrument of learning. But it is also an instrument of doubt, and doubt is good.
Probably all of you remember the KONY 2012 campaign that looked like either a sloppy rendition of pre-Afghanistan events[1] or a well executed diversion[2]. For a moment shortly after the video became a hit, a lot of people were sure that Kony would soon meet his premature demise due to an unexpected bullet originating from a rifle being actively used by American troops. Then came the people who doubted the positive result of such an invasion, who doubted what the campaign was telling them, doubted so much that they dug further and spoke up. Not in defence of Kony, but against the amorality of an invasion. Some were idealists (killing is bad by default), some were utilitarians (a war would cause more harm than the absence of it), some were just plain odd (killing him would make us no better than he is). But they all doubted what was said to them, what a huge number of people took as solid information, when it was, in fact, mere rumour. And that is what philosophy tries to teach, nothing can be known before it is pondered about. With simple things, such as knowing what a lamina arcus vertebrae is, pondering is rather useless because there aren’t that many alternative options. But when morality, principles or emerging sciences are involved, thinking through every new bit of information helps understand it a lot better.
Secondly, modern philosophers have an important role very similar to science fiction authors – inspiration. Asking ‘what if this were possible?’ aids scientists foresee possible implications of emerging technologies, thus helping put these new technologies into practise faster and safer, and it is a source of inspiration for researchers. If it wasn’t for Star Trek, maybe NASA would not be trying to build a warp drive[3]. You might argue that this is the work of science fiction authors, but there isn’t much of a difference between such authors and philosophers. Both theorize about possibilities, judge their viability, take into account human nature, people’s hopes and dreams, both wonder ‘What if…?’. Let’s not forget, there are no career philosophers anymore who would simply lie down at a nice tree and think for hours, that is left for literature majors. But there are active writers that dream big and try to inspire people to do better. Just think about Neal Stephenson and his space elevator or CLANG.
Philosophers used to be the most respected educated professionals that led local life and educated others that followed centuries after they had already passed away. They turned into natural philosophers, they created the concepts of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc. Then each small area of science started spawning their own specialists, general philosophers lost their significance. They changed, from simple dreamers who taught people to think to thinkers who teach people to dream. They have always had sidegigs, they always will. Nowadays we hardly notice them because they do not fit the traditional idea of a philosopher, but they are there, silently progressing the way we think. In a way we need them to keep moving forwards.
I’ve previously talked about the effectiveness of an atmospheric nuclear attack (strike the electronics, not the people), now it is time to talk about guerrilla warfare.
It is the basic cell-based scheme that has caused Americans problems for so long. It is the way terrorists and spies operate – small groups of people working towards the same goal, never connecting unless it is absolutely necessary. The obvious downside is that the plans of two groups could conflict with one another, which is why generally there are very few groups within small distances. Large-scale attacks are hard to carry out as those usually require large numbers of people. But some attacks, such as 9/11, need only a few people. A couple of people per plane will do the trick.
However, as 9/11 so obviously demonstrated, the cell-based strategy means that each cell goes unsupervised. As they go unsupervised, they have free range in what they do. If they decide to opt for a shocking attack in a densely populated area, they are just asking for trouble – the retaliation probably cost the terrorist agenda more harm than good. Even when considering that the violence of the first response spawned countless support groups all over the world that now endanger almost every single city in the ‘Western world’, the ideal that used to be fought for is gone. Religious freedom is less of a priority than survival.
The upshot of cell-based warfare is the lack of connections. If one cell becomes compromised by infiltration or a simple old-fashioned mess-up, the other cells cannot be taken down using the information gained from the first group. Since cells operate as divisions, they do not use the same suppliers, which means that when a supply chain becomes compromised, the organization as a whole suffers minimally. It is the same concept as hiding money in more than one place in the same room – the likeliness of all of it being found decreases with every hiding spot. Some groups can specialize is espionage – seeking out potential targets, publishing secrets that damage the hostile side’s reputation. Some groups could use all that newly published information for campaigning against the hostile group’s higher echelons of power, thus causing morale-induced unrest, increasing the number of traitors and deserters, forcing the hostile leading organization to be more careful with what they do and say – everything could be used against them very actively. Then there are cell that could target the positions of power directly, replacing those with their own people. Once all those spots are covered, a simple coup will end hostilities. The last class of cell would be the ones using the direct approach. When the espionage cells share information about possible targets, these are the people that take action against these targets. Eliminate energy supplies, take down cell towers, disrupt sanitary services (such as water pipelines, waste disposal), eliminate enemy command structures, etc. They make the ‘fire sale’ happen.
This is what makes guerrilla fighting so effective – the lack of connections. When one domino falls, the rest do not follow, they retaliate. And when many groups retaliate for the fall of a single group, it is sometimes better to leave those groups be at peace. Which is the case of Afghanistan – one small attack was retaliated by pretty much the whole of NATO forces (by UN command), which cause an even more widespread problem. In this form, not even the wise can make plans against it. Sometimes even modern military leaders and presidents could learn a thing or two from Sun Tzu.
“There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way.
The war we fight is not against powers and principalities – it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”
The future is unknown and unforgiving, keeping up optimism is oftentimes a difficult challenge. Some people have to remain optimistic about the future to do what they do best[1], but many others can be quite content with realism. Yet often enough, all we can do, is hope.
Hope is what leads progress, we hope that everything works out without a hitch. Then again, if it does not, we can fix the hitch and hope there are no more problems. It is the tried and true method of experimentation. But to make any progress, we need to test new things, broaden new horizons. I would gladly write about it, but doing so would be redundant as recently I came across a piece of writing about the very subject of the present lack of ambition and hope that has caused the lack of great discoveries of late. Since it is a relatively long (though very interesting) text, I shall leave you to it and I’ll be back soon. Enjoy.
Manipulation is generally considered unethical, even though the word encompasses much that is completely logical and beneficial. Regardless of purpose, the result of a successful manipulation is a person that does what he or she wants. The only difference from ‘normal’ situations is that the person in question just found out that he or she wants to do that what he or she is persuaded to want to do. ‘Manipulation’ does not specify whether the newly intended action is harmful or beneficial to the ‘victim’, oftentimes the victim never finds out that he or she has been coaxed into something unknowingly.
To manipulate is easy, the techniques vary from simple thumbs-ups at the right moments to knowing exactly what makes a person tick. Less important manipulations can be carried out with a cold approach, but these are the least useful. To do something of use, one ought to contemplate on how to gain the target’s trust, sometimes even respect. Different people respect different things, some appreciate power, some knowledge, some strength, some the ability to remain cool regardless of pressure. Unfortunately, there is a fine line between establishing respect and showing off – being overwhelming can cause unwanted fear and attention. It is usually best to be almost equal but a little better than the mark in the area of targeted respect. People tend to be wary of overpowering forces, causing distrust and scepticism. Anything too weak and you get stomped on, disregarded. Superficial equality is a lot easier to achieve when you go about your life assuming everyone else is at least as good as you are, unless they want to help you. After all, you are generally on the same boat with many different people who have come to be there using different paths for different reasons, but they have all made it to the same place you have.
Gaining trust is a lot more difficult than gaining respect. Respect is all about what you have done in the past and what you want to do in the future, trust is all about the present. It’s about being not too persistent, and not too cold. It’s about not lying, but also about knowing when to share personal information. It’s about being human. It is the general approach to making long-term friends squeezed into a shorter timeframe. The upshot is that one probably has enough practice by human interaction, the downshot is the bluff – by making a person trust you, you learn a lot about that person. You probably become friends with that person, hence it may be morally difficult to manipulate the target resulting in his or her harm.
However, there is one approach that works with most sentient life forms whether you know them closely or not – the direct method. Explaining to a person argumentatively why a certain course of action is for the best not only reaches the intended result, but it also teaches the ‘manipulator’ to see situations from somebody else’s perspective. This helps the success rate of any future persuasions and sometimes teaches the target analytical thinking, therefore assisting him or her make better future decisions. In this case, manipulation is actually a win-win action.
All in all, manipulation is essentially persuasion. It does not define the maliciousness of intent, it does not define the precise method involved, which is exactly why argumentation is an excellent method. However, if the intent is somewhat less than friendly, it is better to use the art of manipulation on strangers or someone you don’t mind no longer being friends with. It is a powerful weapon and as such has to be handled with care for the danger of an unpleasant backfire. Never mess around with people you care about, not even if they are new acquaintances.
"We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding--the childhood, if you will--that has the most far-reaching repercussions."
I have previously mentioned gaming[1] as a minor element in other topics. However, after I saw an article[2] about a new element of education, I began to wonder. Computers have become a crucial part in our everyday culture, just like numbers, languages, music, etc. These subjects are taught to children and used for further educational purposes – you cannot know physics without knowing maths, you cannot know chemistry without knowing language, music helps remember things by acoustic association. And computers help teach every single one of these.
At school, when a teacher states a problem that you have to solve, it usually has about one solution, rarely there are more. It is a linear cycle where the pupil cannot consider the effectiveness of different approaches to problems as there aren’t enough options for the effectiveness to matter. In a way, it constricts creative thinking and independent learning. But take a standard 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game, such as the classic Sid Meier’s games (SMAC, SMAX, Civilization, Colonization), you get countless options in every single game. You can focus on research, economy, warfare, diplomacy or population, while taking care of every unfocused area. There are different ways to succeed in the focused area. Besides managing one’s own ‘empire’, one has to keep an eye on and consider reactions to the opponent players’ strategy, random events such as floods, market crashes, sudden wars, to name a few. It therefore teaches maths in connection with economic thinking, language as the games tend to have advanced vocabulary (ambivalent, omniscient), even history as 4X games almost always have a storyline that is somehow connected to real events (Colonization is a great example with the founding fathers and whatnot), adaptive thinking and quick decision-making (4X games are usually turn-based so quicker turns means more gameplay per time unit). There is also a fierce competitive element, yet usually cooperation is key, thus it also teaches teamwork – being magnanimous towards a weaker player can pay off later on. The games end when either the player or the player’s ally/allies complete a specific task (ally all nations/be the only one left/be the first one to become an independent state/be the first one to go to space/…), after which the player’s skills are evaluated and a score is given that shows his or her efficiency. By learning new strategies and reconsidering micromanagement techniques the player can improve the score and actually see how he or she is learning to think creatively. The other possible ending is defeat, either by running out of human resources or somebody else completes a specific important task before the player. In this case the player is prompted to try again and learn from his or her mistakes. A simple 4X game does not only teach what to think, but also how to think. But 4X games are surprisingly rare and most of the good ones are already abandonware.
Coming to adventure/mystery games, such as Broken Sword, it does not take a genius to figure out that these teach logic (obviously excluded in the Discworld games), because one the one hand the player has to collect clues and figure out what has happened, what is going happen and why, on the other hand he or she has to interact with different types of people (from diligent guards and violent thugs to flirting archaeologists and French journalists), decide how much to trust them, how to get as much information out of them as possible or how to get out of a sticky situation while avoiding resorting to violence. It teaches common human interaction, people’s wants and fears, often enough it teaches about different real cultures and sometimes about the history of these cultures. Learning all that while having fun sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
Going on to racing (Colin McRae) and shooters (Death to Spies), there isn’t much to say. All they teach is quick reflexes, sometimes teamwork, but more importantly, they teach human psychology. In a typical shooter, the player has to assume that every opponent is at least as good as him or her in terms of accuracy – it boils down to lucky shootouts. Unless you want an edge, something to tip the odds in your favour – being sneaky, surprising the enemy, concealing oneself to avoid detection, anything a typical opponent might not expect. However, every time a trick is used, the chances of it working drop significantly and the trick can start working against the player. That means that the moves have to be innovative and randomized. Not to mention that the player can expect opponents to expect a used trick, which can easily be used against the opponents. By thinking about what your opponents are thinking you can learn to outwit them. Basically it is a simple case of chess with a lot more immediate action. In racing games, reacting to unanticipated corners or obstacles is an important part, but to win, efficient driving is a must. By this I mean acquiring the proper techniques to keep up the average speed in sharp turns by braking exactly at the right time, moving along the edges that allow larger curves in corners, hence allowing for turns at greater speeds. It takes a lot of learning to master any racing game.
There are a lot more types of computer games out there, such as simulation (The Sims) that teach time-planning, basic relationships, the concept of death, strategy games (Gettysburg!) that teach prioritizing, efficiency (again), awareness and quick reaction, and arcade games that teach quick, methodical thinking. There are also genres that have gone unmentioned, such as RPGs, due to the small fact that I have little experience with good RPGs. The main purpose of computer games is entertainment, but any really good computer game also teaches the player something new. The problem with really good games is that they are addicting, but without persistent trying, how could they keep teaching? A single game of Patrician 2 (trading game set in the Hanseatic age) takes weeks to complete (I would assume so), yet by the end the player knows a lot more about the history of tradesmanship and cities that belonged to the Hanseatic League (such as Reval and Riga), has gained a basic understanding of production, supply and demand, why it is generally better to remain noble, how to influence power, and much else. Games supply one option of learning, but they demand balance to remain useful. As far as actual factual knowledge is concerned, games are lousy teachers. They teach methodical thinking, persistence, problem-solving and prioritizing information. For hand-eye coordination or anything else that pertains to physical skills, sports is the method of preference. In conclusion, trying out computer games in early youth can be very rewarding later in life due to their inherent complexity, but are far from perfect. The topic itself is far from closed, but for now I will have to leave you with an appropriate quote I’ve used before and probably will use again.
“Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
It is a status that is a lot more complicated than, say, being a Muslim. If you happen to be a Muslim, everybody who is educated enough knows how you interpret God. However, in the case of atheism, the question goes unanswered until it is actually asked.
The main problem is that there is not just one God or one understanding of God that you do not believe in, it is many. Usually modern atheists in the so-called Western world consider God a being of exceptional power leading people’s lives. But, alas, it is not the only way to understand a ‘God’. Sure, a God taking interest in billions of people going about their daily lives doing unimaginably stupid things might sound far-fetched, but a God by definition ‘supreme being’ merely means there is somebody (or somebodies) further advanced in their evolutionary development compared to us, puny humans. Which sounds pretty logical – the likeliness that Earth is the cradle of all life is pretty small when one thinks about the Universe and its immense size. If life began somewhere else before on Earth or developed faster, they could be considered ‘supreme beings’ from our perspective. Evolution aims for ‘perfect’ beings, or at the very least ‘better than before’ beings, some hitches can occur along the way but the basic process continues nevertheless.
Another possibility is Spinoza’s God[1], basically saying that God is in the orderly formation of the Universe and all its laws. For a scientists, these may indeed seem as if created by a divine force as they are effective and logical. Often enough a lot better than what humans could come up with. Not to mention the staggering complexity that works on a micro- and macroscopical scale, which only supports the theory that the whole system is godly.
There is a third option that can’t be ignored – what if God is human? A God is considered someone powerful, someone who is extremely smart and the motivation to use his or her brains, skills and status in his or her favour. In other words, “a being of unchallengeable power, worshipped by all those beneath me. A true god by any definition”. Leader cult is not unheard of in past dictatorships.
And then we come to the somewhat obvious abstract God that people use as an excuse to their misfortune or stupidity. It is not a ‘God’ in the general sense as it does not specify the nature of the deity, even I may have missed it without a little assistance. But it is a God that people believe in and put blame on. It is merely the illusion of something bringing bad luck or punishment to them, even when a more rational person might blame their own actions or random chance. In a way, it is like karma, the way things are supposed to be. But it also is a God that one can choose not to believe.
So, the next time you or someone else chooses to classify oneself as atheist, know that being one is a lot more complicated that it seems. Everyone is an atheist in some respect or other, it is simply difficult to be an atheist in every respect. That is why I prefer asking atheists what they believe God not to be.
Sorry for a repost of music but I find it quite enjoyable after a serious day. On the weekend I will catch up with TEDtalks and probably find something fascinating to repost here.
Sorry for the long silence, I’ve had a few longer-than-usual days (12 hours with many annoying holes).
It is easy to glide through the steps of education, just passing whatever you need to pass, doing no extra work to excel. Just enough to get through, get certified, get a job. The time not used for cramming to excel can be used for a myriad of possibilities from sleeping and partying to working or learning about something else. Some glide higher, some glide lower. There is a problem with this way of life.
Ambition, or the lack thereof.
It is a well-known opinion that success is determined, among other things, by a person’s ability to focus on a task. By that I do not mean monotasking skills, but the ability to keep working on something without anything getting in the way, distracting you. This allows multitasking as some people are better able to perform a task when they have Rolling Stones blasting in the background, or when going out for a jog (this would have to be a mental task, such as figuring out topics for a paper or what to write in an article). In essence, it is the ability to get things done. Do it without inspiration, at the wrong time (e.g not during a creative prime), while being consumed by distractions… and your task will either be left incomplete or completed half-assed. Gliding through means being not motivated enough to perform tasks with brilliant determination. The results rarely top-notch. And when trying to get a job, it is often the results potential employers check for and want to see, thus gliding can bring problems with filling the purpose of gliding, it could even counteract its aim.
But what if gliding is subjective to tasks? You glide through some things to rock in others.
In theory, this can help offset the lost academic results by creating results in field less popular and/or more specific. Glide through physics to pick up some philosophy, glide through anatomy to learn some medical law, there are plenty of possible examples. But the offset is only effective if there are results, something learned, something gained. “What is of use?” is an excellent guide to prioritizing. Now, you might think that this is thinking is way too practical to allow a person to enjoy life, task knowledge alone is not power. Point is, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” tends to apply. Without hobbies, parties, friends, the chances of having an enjoyable life are pretty slim. Not only don’t you find someone to grow old with, you also decrease the chance of getting a job – you lack social skills. And you are surprisingly likely to go mad living under a rock. Therefore enjoying your life while making sure you can enjoy it when you grow older is a vital part in making sure you can enjoy it later. You know you can do more, be more. Gliding is okay, as long as it has a purpose. All you need is some ambition. Sure, you can’t not always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.
