The end of a pass of an arbitrary loop of time is the beginning of another pass of the arbitrary loop of time

Should video games get Olympic representation?[1]

In particular a comment from ManchuCandidate:

“Hmmm, there's cheating scandals in the sport. Check. Seems pointless to add them into an already bloated Olympic sched like ballroom dancing (unless you are the utterly corruptable former head of the IOC Juan Samaranch.) Check. If the Olympics bans Red Bull/other energy drinks and Cheetos then there will be a PEDs issue. Check. Domination of the sport by a few select nations for easy gold medals. Check. Way cheaper infrastructure wise than the luge or bobsled runs. Plus.”

So eSports might not be as physically demanding as traditional or modern Olympic sports, but seem to satiate all other criteria for it. The benefits of computer games have been widely documented and discussed, and they are surprisingly similar to the benefits of physical sports. After all, to be good at anything on a professional level you need to put a lot of time and training into it. Like athletes, most professional gamers train for hours every single day in order to keep their reflexes sharp, teamwork smooth and anticipation skills up to par. Because video games are not just about point-and-click shooting, they are about being quick, careful and accurate. But most of all, being a team player. Being able to understand the movements, intentions and abilities of your colleagues and opponents. Knowing where to be and when to move for a maximum effect. It is more than quick fun, it's tactics and strategy. Some games more so than others.

And that last bit is what really throws the idea off. The choice. How do you decide which games to include? Even singling the genre down to 4X you meet a plethora of popular options. Every game's supporters claiming that their game is better than some other game with the same mechanics. But you can't have every game in a competition. Especially one already laden with other events. Even large tournaments have a rather limited selection of games that are competed in. The versus-mechanic means most games will require a series of events similar to football championships. Dragging even one of those events into the Olympic games would be lacklustre. Dragging many would be even worse.

More importantly, chess is not an Olympic sport. Neither is Xiangqi. Or any other simple game that requires lots of thinking, but not a lot of physical prowess. I mean, if you want easy, play checkers. But keep it out of the Olympics. They have their own tournaments and that is just fine. Just like eSports, or however you like to call them.

"I trust people. It is the devil inside them I cannot trust."

Soul. What is it?

Generally we think of a soul as a whole. Who a person is, what he is like, what drives him, how he thinks etc. It is like a non-localized phenomenon, aether in the air, somehow linked to a physical manifestation - a body. It is further fueled by tales of out-of-body experiences and possessions. Another important factor is without doubt fantasy/sci-fi. Trading bodies for a Friday, absorbing other people's souls, extraordinary abilities, knowledge-downloading, even wiping a soul from a body and creating a new one in its place, the concept of a 'soul' is almost always abstract.

And there is a really good reason for it. It is magic, a miracle, it is something we do not yet fully comprehend. We know it is somehow the result of neural pathways organized into a neat neural network. We know messing with that network can cause permanent or temporary personality changes, we know damaging it can effectively turn a healthy human into a vegetable. We know that the network is somewhat similar in every single one of us, yet undoubtedly different. We know it is the result of our growth, our experiences, our parents' teachings. Everything that happens to us changes us, creates us. But how?

The brain itself is an amazing piece of Jello. It is soft as cheese and even has holes (relatively empty connected chambers) in it. Yet it contains enough computing power to allow the invention of phones you can have conversations with. Not to mention making a call. It also has a characteristic called 'neuroplasticity', meaning if a part of it is damaged or missing, the rest of it tries to compensate, reallocate resources to manage the tasks run by the omitted or ineffective part of the brain. It is the reason there are people alive without ever having a cerebellum, a part of the brain with an impressive concentration of effective neurons (as opposed to glial cells that make up a large part of the rest of the brain while basically filling the position of 'support crew' to the effective neurons). It is why people with half a brain can use both hands. So if the brain can somewhat fix itself or reallocate entire areas of itself to new purposes that require more attention, can the soul also be intrinsically mended?

The brain can also be fooled. Virtual reality goggles are a reality that have cause plenty of scares by now, making people think they are riding on a rollercoaster while sitting calmly in an office. The phantom hand/penis/whatnot problem is widely documented and interrupted neural pathways have been blamed. Then again, the brain can quickly be taught to think a rubber hand is part of the body. Hypnosis is a relatively popular technique of rewriting the brain. Déjà vu is a very popular event, caused by the brain misinterpreting present events as past events. These are but a few examples of where the brain makes mistakes, either accidentally or because someone wants it to. If we cannot always trust our brains, how can be trust our souls?

We know what causes a 'soul' to exist, but we have yet to understand why or how. We know what a soul is made of, but we have but an inkling of how it functions. Then again, sometimes we are better of not knowing. Other times knowing just adds to the magic. So, how does that make you feel?

There is no greater weapon than devotion

Life doesn't always give simple choices. In ways we are challenged by life on a daily basis. It is a challenge to keep doing the same work every day, maintain a hobby with limited time and resources, for many it is a challenge to get out of bed early in the morning every single day. Again and again, routine kills a little bit of motivation to manage the routine. But we keep going, day after day, rinse and repeat.

Situations life brings us to are never easy, instead they can be demoralizing, devastating, deprived of joy. Some difficulties are hurled at us by our own actions, some are hurled by the lives of others. But no matter the problems, no matter the difficulties, no matter the challenges... the places life brings us to are places where we can learn. About life, the Universe, about yourself and others, about the laws of life, whether they are written or not, about everything. And that keeps us going.

For we are a curious race. We put a man on the Moon not because it was simple but because it was difficult. We harnessed the power of electricity to have lightbulbs so we can learn during the night. We created a process by which we can get electricity from a reaction on the atomic level. Humans have achieved a lot through stubbornness, laziness and war. Just as with life, bad things have come with great discoveries, good discoveries have had bad consequences. Human history is marked in waves of success and failure, of grandieur and slop, of harmony and noise.

As is the life of every individual on this beautiful planet. We all get out highs and lows. We keep going on the highs to postpone the lows, keep pushing through the lows for we know we will yet experience highs. And at every step we learn. About ourselves, about others, about the world around us. And we keep running in out giant hamster wheels.

For we are a curious race. We yearn to learn, we get excited by puzzles, we anticipate questions. Each of us have different questions to answer, some about love, some about life. But after all the pondering and searching we can come up with a single truth, a single thing to take for granted. We are one. And we keep pondering and searching to the best of our abilities.

For we are a curious race.

What does it mean 'to be'?

Chatbots are fun little gimmicks.[1] A little while back one chatbot was reported to have passed the Turing test.[2] That has been debunked.[3] Very much so, in fact. Time to debunk the debunkery, from the last source:

"3. It "beat" the Turing test here by "gaming" the rules -- by telling people the computer was a 13-year-old boy from Ukraine in order to mentally explain away odd responses."

Against Turing protocol. Also, Turing test is a test of consciousness, not perception. The chatbot doesn't 'believe' it is a 13-year-old boy from Ukraine, it is told to say that. An AI does not need a backstory, the test does not include memories. It tests a 'normal' conversation, not a flashback episode of a TV show. The point repeats the first point - such a gimmick is not worthy of a Turing test. The results mean nothing, regardless of how much the Turing test has been warped to make it passable by a simple chatbot. True again.

It continues in the same track - Turing test is not a single shot with handpicked judges. The Turing test was designed so that it would be difficult to pass, but easy to understand. Quite simply it meant putting a person (judge) to IM on a computer. After a while he would say whether he was talking to a computer or a person. If people's ability to differentiate between man and machine constantly remains statistically insignificant (you can no longer confidently say a random person can probably make a difference), the test is passed.

To make the test more reliable, it should be a double-blind (the evaluators don't know if the judge is being tested by a human or a computer) and randomized. In fact, it would be best if the people didn't know there was a chance they are talking to a computer (so they'd go for 'normal' conversations instead of trying to trick the computer).

"6. The whole concept of the Turing Test itself is kind of a joke. While it's fun to think about, creating a chatbot that can fool humans is not really the same thing as creating artificial intelligence. Many in the AI world look on the Turing Test as a needless distraction."

No, it is not. If you can create a chatbot that can convincingly discuss religion and philosophy, art and morality as convincingly as an average human you have indeed created something spectacular. Because to do that you need more than a chatbot, the 'chat' at that point will only be an interface, what goes on in the background is short of creating novels, symphonies, paintings. To fake discussions, you need to simulate emotions. Typically hormonal reactions created by bytes on a board. Manage that and you have revolutionary technology. And the only way to test if you've succeeded in creating the first 'human' computer is that 'needless distraction' commonly known as the Turing test.

Just think of it, if you can create a proper AI with a personality prototype you will be a leap closer to having plastic pals that are fun to be with.[4]

I would not be surprised if in a few months someone declared once again that the Turing test has been passed by a chatbot. And it will be big news once again because news agencies love making huge news out of nothing, regardless of what they report is true or false. Though let's be honest, even some reputable news sources manages to flame this up. But for any readers, take these news with a grain of salt.

Ab uno disce omnes

From one, learn all.

But can you really learn all from a single person? Well, no. As long as you cannot know everything about a person, you cannot learn everything from him/her. But how about learning everything you can? Well, that brings up an interesting point.

People are not snowflakes[1,2], there are distinct differences. Some people are better at lying and concealing information, some are better at acquiring it. Some handle numbers better, some have amazing memory capacities. So say you are great at amassing knowledge. Great for you, your persistence keeps you soaring above others when it comes to knowing and navigating details. It is one of the most impressive abilities there are. And then you meet someone who, for the life of him/her, cannot remember stuff they've tried to remember only a few days ago. Even if something is remembered, it is but a piece of what should be. However, that person more than makes up for it with quick wits and icy logic. How can one learn how the other thinks? How is the other able to learn to remember like the first one?

As a late habit I've started reading other people's code. While solving simple tasks doesn't really show much, even in Java, but complex problems require creative problems. Some people tackle them head-on, some take a more scenic route. Some hammer it in the most brutal manner imaginable. But as one reads what another has created, and once comprehends it, one's mind starts to change. It is not just about learning different solutions to problems, subconsciously it is learning new approaches. You learn new ways of thinking, and that carries over to other less-techy stuff.

But it gets worse when you bring in emotions. You cannot 'learn' to have emotions. It's like explaining a colour or trying to understand pain while suffering from congenital analgesia. Emotions and perceptions are subjective and intrinsic. They are inherent of being human with the capacity to experience love and lust, hate and madness, value beauty, practicality, companionship. Trust. These are hormonal responses that cannot be taught or learned. Senses, even worse.

What makes all of it so sad is that while you cannot learn to have emotions, you can forget about them. Bottle them up, shove them to the back of your head, ignore or avoid them. It is easy to forget to enjoy life and no amount of manic pixie dream girl tropes [3] will fix that. "My shoes are too tight. But it does not matter, I have forgotten how to dance." [4]

via Gizmodo

"Do or do not. There is no try."

via BBC

 

This statement has caused quite a bit of dismay. Added to that another quote:

"A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation, a lot of costumes [inaudible]. It would have doubled the work on those things. And I mean it's something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision... It's unfortunate, but it's a reality of game development."

via io9
 

So basically what happened was that Ubisoft, the company behind numerous top titles (Including the Ghost Recon series), declared that the new Assassin's Creed game would not include female assassins. The previous games have had them, but making female models for the new one seemed like too much work. While this may be an excellent chance to take pot-shots against game developers being all male and girlfriendless, in my opinion there is a larger issue here. So what if they chose to cut female assassins out of the game (though they had the framework done for the NPCs), it won't be the only game with no female playable characters out there. What bothers me is that they had to cut anything at all.

 

The point of making a sequel, aside from making yet another ton of money, is that the original had something to be improved upon. Something that could have been done better or could be done better using new techniques and technologies. Something you think could have been done differently. Those are the sequels that people want and expect, not cheap copies with cut content. DLCs are for adding to the game, not for finishing it. But Assassin's Creed is not the first game to be published before it is a finished product. EA has faced angry criticism to that regard plenty of times.

 

Time for nostalgia. Back in the good old days when a game came to the market, it was ready. Maybe it required some patches to nail even the tiniest of bugs, but as it was, it had 99.9% of all features and content there would be. Anyone wanted more, there were the modders. When you thought 'hey, this faction would be cool in this game' you did not have to wait for the developers to implement it, you did it yourself or got some people together who would do it together. Developers maintained the project, any more work they did was free extra.

Nowadays, you can publish the game before you finish it. There are plenty of publishing platforms that will let you start earning profit regardless of whether you actually create a wholesome product. Part of the problem are the preset publishing dates that have often been declared overly optimistically. Fortunately there are some (relatively independent) developers such as Triumph Studios that will give a very foggy release date (year, season) until they can be absolutely sure they can have a finished product by the time the clock runs out.

But it is not about games, it is about attitude. It is about the creators' willingness to commit to the project, to make it as good as they can, to make it something they are proud of. It is difficult to do with sequels to successful projects because there is very little new to add. Without anything to add, there is no 'new' project. It is redoing what you've already done, nothing significant has changed. And if you can't be bothered to make it at least as good as your previous work (or aren't enabled to by your publisher/boss), the sense of enjoyment somewhat goes missing. Making a successful product is great, but is it as good as you want it to be? After creating the first few epic titles, I'd imagine you get a bit more freedom to improve upon them as you see fit.

Independent developers often release beta-products. They show what they've done and share it as they develop it. More often than not, these developers do it as their side project. Something they do for fun. They may earn a bit from it, but they rarely put it on sale until it is ready.

All in all, I get that with strict deadlines everything might not be ready by the time it is due. I don't get that the limits are found too constraining until it is too late. I get why releasing a product too early makes sense where money is concerned, I don't get why it has become more of a rule than an exception.

 

Time and tide wait for no man

The doctrine of unintended consequences.

Recently, I came across this[1].

It is a recap of a Canadian TV show Continuum which tells a tale about time travel. It also touches upon the problems involved. What started as a skirmish in time between two factions has grown to be one crazy mess where anything is possible and everything hangs in the balance. The reason for that mess: unintended consequences.

The doctrine thereof is an easier version of chaos theory. Where chaos theory says that everything is in perfect balance and changing something no matter how small by interfering with the past will lead to... yes, chaos. To put it simply, say you go back in time and end up in an art school. You reject a few people who want to enrol because they are simply not good enough. Chaos theory suggests this would lead to total annihilation, everything everywhere would be in ruins. Life might persist, but might not. By the doctrine of unintended consequences all that happens is Hitler rises to power. Not that bad considering the alternative.

What it all leads up to is that you cannot always predict what happens when you choose to do something. How it affects others, how it affects what happens next. And in a linear world, you don't really need to, you don't care. Sure, what you intend to happen and what does happen doesn't exactly have to be similar, but you have to frame of reference. You don't know what would have happened if you chose to do any differently. Yes, fighting for your ideals may lead to death and destruction, but you don't what what would happen if you didn't. Until you see the results, you don't know whether or not you have caused any negative unintended consequences or not. Thus changing the past... you never know if you've succeeded until you are past the point of no return. Even the attempt to change something significant is a monumental risk.

All that is well and good, but most of us don't have the power to lead the world into chaos or prosperity. So the unintended consequences don't affect many people, whatever damage we may cause, it remains local. The risks are smaller, but so are the gains. Sometimes we get someone fired over something we did not intend to do, sometimes we get amazing offers just because we decided to take part in something. The best we can do is aim for something, do lots, and hope it works out. Yes, it can turn out badly but it is likely you cannot cause anything catastrophical. On the other hand, you risk more by doing nothing.

Well this may be a bit awkward

I mean this.

It is an article that promotes an author of a book about seducing women. In the article is a link to a video about the book and about the fantastic system that is The Tao of Badass. It teaches any man, great or small, rich or poor, pretty or hideous to get any woman they want. Either for a one night stand, a week's dating or even for love. Even keep multiple women happy and in love at the same time. Seems ridiculous, but you've yet to watch the video.

The video first gives a small taste of what he promises, then leads on to a tragic tale that explains how the author knows so much (apparently he read a lot of books and got horny), then gives a few simple tastes of psychology. The common putting visual or cognitive stress on lips for example. Breaking down tension by uttering babble that can be misinterpreted as showing trust, confidence and convenience. The video is rather lengthy, filled with vague promises and success stories, leaving many watchers glued to the screen. All while making those watchers begging for more - available for a humble sum of money.

While I must grant psychology does work when trying to gain attraction from a member of the opposite sex. We are no penguins, we need social interaction before we choose a mate (or to mate), how we interact has obvious consequences pertaining to prolonged contact with that person (fancy words to avoid being too blunt and distasteful). Some psychological effect can be abused in most situations, some hardly ever. But even psychologists know that even though people are not snowflakes, they are somewhat different. Even minute differences in the limbic system (especially the amygdala) or the prefontal cortex change how or what a person feels or does. So vague promises or not, there is no magic bullet to get with any girl.

But is there a need for a magic bullet? Should a man be able to go after any girl he pleases and have guaranteed success? Is it perhaps okay then for any man to have the following situation every now and then?



For this convergence to work out mathematically, women would have to become extremely active sex-wise. This may be a bit of a slippery slope argument, but would this not lead to a sudden rise in overall sexual activity and lower the importance of meaningful long-term relationships? Not saying that we should immediately assume this is bad, but it's food for thought.

This may be a bit narrow-minded, but I prefer a traditional approach. Loyalty to your partner. Respect. Having a family that you trust and can trust you. No need to sleep around, no desire to risk everything you have. It doesn't matter if you have a male or a female partner, as long as the relationship is stable and worthwhile for everyone involved. This cannot happen when one or more of these partners doesn't value the relationship enough not to stray. As I said, might be a bit narrow-minded, but it works for me.

All in all, a playbook that gets any man any woman they want is a fake, it's a scam. It cannot be done. The fact that the salesperson grades women on a ten point scale depending on how they look and stresses how every man should go for the 9s and 10s simply adds insult. Not to just women, degrading them into mere numbers based on looks, but men as well, simplifying them to the extent where all a man wants is frequent intercourse with physically arousing women. To believe such a person would be able to make all that happen? That just manages to insult the intelligence of those he is selling it to. Sometimes a conman can be cool, sometimes... not so much.

Even a tiny pebble can start a rockslide

It's the little things that matter.

Imagine you meet a person. Let's call him Rico. He's alright when he comes into your circle of friends, eventually he will leave. He does no harm, he's just passing by, sometimes even gets forced out. But give him a dark seed, infect him with foul wishes, and he will bring death and destruction to anyone he meets. In the end, it is the person we blame, it is the person that is evil and is therefore hated. Not the seed.

While this may seem random, the same is true for microbes. Vibrio cholerae is a tiny little bacterium that nobody really should mind. Yet when you hear of him, you basically know he causes cholera, a disease that can kill, and even if it doesn't, is at the very least very unpleasant. But he doesn't have to, he doesn't even want to. He just wants to live his life to the fullest, making sure he has plenty of offsprings that look just like him, eating away at anything suitable they might find. They don't want to attack anyone. In a normal situation, they don't. They can infect anyone without causing any symptoms, which is why we don't hear about how safe and harmless it is. Well, mostly harmless.

Because that all changes when it is infected by a virus. The virus isn't just some ordinary cold virus, it is a nasty one, and it aims for V.cholerae with a mighty desire to get under its membrane. Once there, it abuses the bacterium's own proteins to insert some totally badass genes to the bacterium's DNA. These genes include directions to produce a myriad of dangerous toxins. The most famous one: Cholera toxin. But among other genes are other toxins that have similar effect - though through a slightly different action mechanism. Some cause damage to epithelial cells, some weaken the links between them, some activate ion channels in their membranes... but they all cause a sudden efflux of water. That in turn causes severe dehydration that, left untreated, can be fatal. Treatment includes the administering of water. The bacterium itself is safe enough that it gets thrown out by the immune system.

But for some reason little cute V.cholerae gets the blame for doing something that he was forced to do by some nasty virus. You know the virus' motto: 'Your cells under new management', in this case they take over a bacterium and brutally abuse it for evil schemes. It is not even a situation that can be compared to being held at gunpoint and told to do something you don't want to. In that situation you would have a choice - do or die. In the case of this tiny helpless bacterium there is no 'die' option. It is forced to become a weapon of mass excretion. And even so it gets the blame for it, not the bacteriophage that gave him the wherewithal to be evil and forced him to use it. It is quite unfair.

After all, when you think of it, we are talking about a virus that uses an innocent bacterium to attack a giant lifeform, even bring about its death. It can kill a healthy individual without ever even entering a human cell. It doesn't have to. Somehow in its evolution it, a virus that cannot even be seen using a light microscope, has specialized to kill humans by way of bacterium-induced diarrhea. That's amazing, but sort of evil nevertheless. I would not root for the underdog.

The lesser evil

What should be the preset morality of autonomic cars?

For background, companies (sadly including Google) are developing systems to make cars that drive on their own. You just sit in, input the destination, and the car makes sure you get there by finding a route, adhering to traffic rules etc. How it reacts in situations where your normal GPS would lead you to a field or into a lake is of much musing, but for now let's just leave it there.

A car as such would have to be programmed. It would have to follow strict rules regardless of the situation. Avoid a crash if possible, if crash cannot be avoided maximize damage to the front, if there is no crash imminent, follow traffic laws, whatever. What has cause somewhat of a stir are questions about situations when a crash is inevitable. One of the examples is driving an SUV, a tire blows and you have two options. Either steer or let it swerve left into the oncoming lane and traffic... or sharply turn right to compensate, turning the SUV into a sliding box going off the road to the right. If there is a pasture on the right or no oncoming traffic this would not be a problem at all. But what if there is a small car coming on the opposite lane and a cliff on the right? A situation you would probably not happen to experience, but for the purposes of explaining the problem, it works.

A SUV hitting a small car head-on at great speed (for the purposes of crash damages, the speeds of both vehicles get added up) would probably mean a death sentence for anyone in the small car, but the SUV passengers would probably live, even walk away from the crash. On the other side, a cliff is a cliff and anyone going over would probably die. So, should a car aim to kill people in the wrong place at the wrong time to protect its owner... or should it kill its owner to avoid collateral damage? Either way it is kind of messed up, after all when we buy a car we would assume that the car is built so that it would protect us. But how far should it go to fulfill this aim?

The problem here is the fact that the car requires rules to follow. These rules must the wide enough to be applicable in most situations, but strict enough to be enforceable. One of these rules would either have to say 'protect the passengers at any cost' or 'protect other people at any cost'. Drawing a line between these extremes would be riddled with a plethora of ethical dilemmas. But the car would always have to act the same way.

Another situation that people have found troubling is yet another inevitable crash. A crash where the car has a choice - to hit a small car or a large car. If the speeds are low enough that the crash would not mean instant and definite death to all those involved, the basic logic would be 'a larger vehicle can absorb more energy of the crash, thereby decreasing actual damages. Should the car then be programmed to aim for larger vehicles (we are assuming here that damages inflicted to the passengers of the soon-to-be crashing car would sustain similar injuries either way - not going fast enough to kill them, but not slow enough for the choice not to matter; the problem is the jolt of the car hitting the other car that can cause neck and other injuries for the passengers of the other car)? Should car makers punish people driving SUVs? Or let fate take its choice and remove any person from responsibility?

These are the kinds of problems we didn't have before autonomous machines. But these are also the problems science fiction authors have been dealing with for decades. Even Isaac Asimov's proposed rules seem perfect, but leave a lot of gray area between them. Then again, the problems arise from perceived morality which is always subjective. It is not about the cars or computers, it is about the people.

Underneath cold logic lies a warm heart

Objectivity.

We might think we are logical. But every now and then someone comes along and smashes our preconception that we are sane, sober. That event makes us rethink who we are, what we know. And in the end, all we can do is state the obvious: we are subjective, no matter how hard we try not to be.

I am one of the people who take pride in the ability to distance oneself from situations. Just stand back and see what is really going on. It is one of the abilities that Forbes[1] claims successful people use to fight stress. It eases assessment and the following decisions appear to be more solid in nature and turn out to be more effective. For some it is easy, for others it is impossible.

To train oneself in the art of stepping away from the situation, one can simply look at everyday things, from complex machines to simple devices. And simply think of their essence, how they are put together, what do they do? How does a crane go up, what's the point of having rebar rods in concrete, how do pump valves work? Simple curiousities that open up a whole new world and force you to look beyond what's plainly visible. It forces you to look deeper into any problem, analyze it to find alternative solutions, pros and cons for these solutions to understand why these alternatives are not used. It is a bit of analytical thinking that can be trained with little everyday exercises that one can do almost anywhere at any time. As long as you can think, you can never be truly bored.

However, training analytical thinking is as effective as Pavlov's dog conditioning. It certainly has effect, but it does not rule out alternative mechanisms, it does not rule out malfunctions. Every once in a while even the most objective mind will miss or ignore something willingly and create subjectivity. Every once in a while it reassesses its values and hopes, thus changing the criteria on which its decisions and evaluations are based. Every once in a while a bit of subjectiveness will come in no matter what we do. After all, we are human. We use our gut instinct, we jump in strange places, we travel in the dark. Just hoping that we make it through, hoping we find a piece of light.

Sometimes subjectiveness is induced by a certain emotional event or by an emotional reaction to someone we meet. It could be something that rocks your boat, or something that rocks your world. It can range from winning a huge scholarship to seeing a nice smile and sinking in it. As long as it creates a spontaneous emotional response, it creates a high risk of subjectiveness. Which isn't necessarily bad, sometimes things feel funny for a reason. Instincts are what have kept us alive thus far, they have guided us through thick and thin so that we could arrive at this moment in time to read these words, written by someone who reached the point of writing them thanks to listening to his instincts.

As I mentioned earlier, I am an avid fan of objectivity, of mental distancing. Surprisingly many situations can be solved by it, resulting in mature and responsible decisions. But no extreme is ever effective, and as such, one can hardly ever ignore feelings when we find someone special. Friendships are difficult to form without listening to instincts, relationships are impossible. Our everyday life requires the use of subjective analyses since every single situation in our lives includes unknown variables. The more complicated the situation, the more we need to analyze it before we can trust our instincts, for they can be mistaken. Often enough we cannot see enough, and hence we must use our gut. Then again, if you listen to every gut feeling, you never get anything done.

"There is no certainty, only opportunity."

The brain is the most important part of the body. According to the brain.

Neurophysiology is a rather fascinating science. Difficult to research as most methods by necessity are invasive and possibly harmful. Yet infinitely complex in its nature. Just think of the myriad of emotions you are able to experience, think of the information you are able to analyze and store, think of all the creative ideas any person can come up with. And then think about 9% of all Europeans (according to research) have suffered or are suffering from more serious mental problems, most of it being depression. 20% of American homeless people suffer from skizophrenia. How to differentiate brilliance from madness of a molecular or neural scale? How do you know whether a person is depressed, not just feeling a little under the weather?

It is difficult to tell these states apart by looking at the symptoms, it is more difficult to find the causes. In a way, the causes of mental illnesses use security through obscurity. With all of these different brain functions manifesting at all kinds of different times, how do you tell which specific reaction (or lack thereof!) is causing a specific pathology? Without years, or even decades of thorough research, you just don't. You take a stab in the dark and hope you can solve it in time.

When speaking of electrical signals, you can think of a brain as a glob of Jello. In fact, the comparison is frighteningly apt. If you were to add electrodes to both (a brain and a glob of actual Jello), you can get brainwaves from both (if the Jello wobbles, which if you have any sense of fun, it will). But as Jello is not really a brain as a whole, sometimes neither is the brain. Alien hands might not be very common, but they do occur. For those that don't know, alien hand occurs when there is a communication problem between the right and the left hemisphere. Just imagine a married couple refusing to talk to each other after a fight. The problem with no communication is that one side does not know or understand what mischiefs the other side is up to, and can panic. Especially if at least one side is irrational. That can lead to one side of the body attempting to harm the other side, inevitably hurting itself in the process.

So that's all the brain is. A ball of fun directing our every move, regardless of whether it understands why or how. A mix of wires so complex that 'thought' and 'emotion' are possible. Most actual effective neurons are concentrated in a rather tiny spot at the back of the head, with a lot of the rest filled with glial cells that work as isolation and support. Put simply, it is a bunch of tangled wires that by some amazing process have combined into a central processing unit with subunits that process different kinds of informational input. We know how neurons work, but we don't know how the system works. We can't even reproduce the existing networks. That's what modern neuroscientists and computer scientists are trying to do - create a simulation of neurons and see if and how they create a brain-like structure. If it works, who knows, maybe the next step is organic computing.

If you know that a healthy brain is infinitely complex, just imagine a brain with a quirk in it. Then you understand why mental illnesses are so darn difficult to define, locate cause of, and remedy. Even thinking about it changes your brain, possibly causing a fault or a kink in it. Now that is scary.

A piece of him, a dash of her, mix it up and you get a new person.

'The sale of human organs should be legalized.'

This topic reminds me of this other quote:

"Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself."

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

Human organs are no more special than the genetic code. Even now scientists can create surprisingly accurate depictions of people by reading their DNA. While this technology is mostly of use in crime fighting, DNA is used, prodded and poked all the time. It is tested on, it is experimented with. Gene-storing centers basically buy and sell gene information to each other. So why not do the same with human organs? After all, in dire situations you are more likely to benefit from somebody else's organ than somebody else's DNA.

But first things first. Is there a need for a legal human organ market? We already have donors, in some countries the donor system is opt-out (meaning if you do not specifically say you do not wish to be a donor, you are a donor by default). So people in need who meet the demands for a donor recipient are already taken care of, in some part. In others, it is opt-in, which makes keeping the supply up a bit more challenging. But let's be honest, who wouldn't opt-in with the current systems, probably wouldn't opt-in with a free market. Naturally you cannot help people in demand if you have an insufficient supply. But short of organ harvesting from living people, a legal donor market won't increase the supply.

Sure, one could imagine that the market would encompass the world, whereas the donor program generally only works between countries relatively close to one another. The problem with long-distance organ donorship is transportation and storage. Getting a heart or a lung to a destination thousands of kilometres away without critical deterioration is tricky. It is expensive and extremely time-sensitive. Getting it to work with even longer distances is even more problematic and more dangerous. Simply put, getting the market to go world-wide would be quite a daunting task, and a very possibly impractical one at that. That means the supply won't increase anyways.

Quite frankly, the only legal way this new open market would increase supply is if the donors were to be reimbursed for their generous contributions. In other words, people would have to sell their dying bodies for spare parts. Even if we manage to keep it on the level, are we as a society ready for that? For argument's sake let's say we are. But even so, is gaining a marginally larger supply of donors worth the painful transition phase from a voluntary donorship policy to a capitalism-based one, and do we lose a bit of our souls doing it? Or are good deeds indeed good regardless of motivation and intent?

To plant intellect, you need the right kind of soil

Education. Something extremely valuable, yet so often ignored. In many cultures education has indeed stalled, or even become worse than before. In some, education has prospered, become something respected and even demanded. But for education to prosper, it needs more than good teachers, good schools and the chance to attend them. For education to prosper, you need to spark interest in it.

Back in the old days you had A-team, MacGyver on the telly. They showed what can be done when time is of the essence, when resources are plentyful, and when you had a dire need for something unusual. If you wanted to know more about the reactions and principles behind the constructions, you could watch Bill Nye the Science Guy. On a higher level you had Feynman's lectures. The telly was a world of wonder for anyone who was curious about the world and how it works. I mean, who didn't like the machines and fixes made of random conveniently placed objects? They explained everything from chemical buffer systems to electrical fuses, and you had a good time watching them do it.

Now that's all in the past. Just like video killed the radio star, internet has taken a mallet to educational TV. Sure, you have your Brainiac with its scientific inaccuracy (flat out lies), Mythbusters with little to no explanations and Burn Notice where everything is solved by duct tape and guns. Lots of guns. But quite frankly, these shows lack the jerry-rigging that made the older shows so fun to watch. To see what can be done with random objects you have lying around, to see the world of possibilities around you, expanded by having scrap. That feeling was spectacular. Those days are gone.

But are they?

For the past few years there has been a TV show airing in Estonia that pits teenagers against each other in a battle of wits. The participants must show their intelligence as parts of teams and as individuals. In each episode the young stars have to solve three problems of increasing difficulty, often building everyday devices using unusual materials and methods. One by one the weakest performers are eliminated until only the best remains and wins a large scholarship and some additional prizes.

But the main point of it is not competition, it is about innovative problem solving. It is about inspiring younger people to start exploring and experimenting, to start learning. It is about creating groovy role models out of actual science-curious teenagers for kids to follow. Making 'smart' considered 'cool'. It is about creating the spark of interest in science and education. And it is working - even as a 'edutainment' show, it has a stable viewership of nearly 10% of the country's total population.

It is a direction the other countries should follow. Education should be valued, it should be propagated. But it should also be done in a way suitable for children - not in commands, but in opportunities. Force a kid to learn chemistry and he might do it, have enormous difficulties with it and forget it the week after. It does not mean he is an addlepate, it means he wasn't given the chance to be curious. Show him what chemistry can do for him, something practical, something he can see, do, and consequently understand. And he will learn more than you could ever force him to. I'm not saying you should deprive the kid of things he has not shown interest in, I'm saying give him a chance to be curious. And you'll be amazed at the results.

"You didn't grow up, you grew old."

"How can you hear silence?"
"You have to train yourself. You have to just shut everything else out of your mind and focus."
"Why would you want me to listen to nothing?"
"Because that's where everything important is."
Growing up is weird. It is more than growing old, it is becoming wiser, maturing in your way of thinking. It is gradually changing who you are as a person. I know Avicii's "Wake me up" is a bit old to be used as an example, but it is the best I can think of here. For the reason is simple: it is yet another example of Mobius pop. It tells the listener to let the singer sleep until the singer has become older and wiser. While it does not consist of recursive logic, it does consist of conflicting claims - "wake me up" and it's condition "when I'm wiser". Being asleep, one cannot become wiser, even if one can, there is no way to communicate it to the listener. Thus "wake me up" becomes "don't ever wake me up" and "when I'm wiser" becomes "so I can never be wise".

Conflicts aside, growing up means experiencing life. Not sleeping it away. In the movie 'Philosophers' (spoiler alert!) students in a philosophy class take part in a mind experiment several times. They try the utilitarian approach a couple of times, always failing due to a meddlesome teacher. Then they cheat to exclude the teacher and go off in the opposite direction - they have fun. They don't focus on sustainability and success, they focus on wellbeing, entertainment, even if it is the end of them. For this way they die happy. The movie should have ended right there with the conclusion that people are but butterflies, inhabiting this wee planet for a few decades before perishing, making temporary connections to people, falling in love knowing that everything they start will end, everything they create will be demolished. In the eyes of the cosmic clock, the life of an individual is but a quick moment - blink and you miss it. Blink and it's gone. Blink and you're dead. If life is for so little, why not enjoy it?

However, life is no enjoyment if one does not learn from it. The greatest gift is knowledge and the willingness to use it. Scientia est potentia is a phrase most commonly used about technological advances and secrets, but it applies with common knowledge as well as with quirky facts. Knowing more empowers you to do greater things. Having fun is good, but if it kills you, you can't continue having fun. Knowledge gives you the opportunity to have fun for longer and in more diverse ways. Cutting up a person becomes more fun if you know anatomy, cooking stuff becomes more fun if you know chemistry. Watching a foreign movie becomes more fun if you know the language. But you cannot learn if you ignore the world, if you sleep through your days just waiting for someone else to 'wake you up'. Given that you're reading this I'd say you are already doing quite well for a start. The question you have to ask yourself is 'What's next?'.

If I had to give advice about how to live a life that you'd be happy with I'd say think of something you really, really want. Something big, something hard to get. Something pretty much impossible. Then think of how you can achieve it, and do it. Then think of something even more difficult and more complicated and repeat the process. In the end you'll have grown more than you'd expect. And you'll probably end up old and wise. Avicii would be happy.

People tend to think time is a linear sequence of cause and effect. In reality, it is more of a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey... stuff.

Karma. The way things are supposed to be.

It is difficult to make an argument against predeterminism. Anyone who has taken a slightly unhealthy interest in physics knows that with enough data, any outcome can be predicted. With large objects it is fairly obvious, an apple will fall towards the Earth if it is let go, a window washer will fall down if the ladder tumbles. Most chemical processes can be predicted using the laws of thermodynamics.

But most of life is not just falling apples and dead window washers. A great deal of life is social interaction. Giving people something to react to and anticipating those reactions. Getting something to react to and reacting according to your own beliefs. Sharing information in verbal, visual or indeed any form, and reacting to it. Receiving sense data and changing it. But predicting human behavior is a tricky thing - people are different and many will do things that surprise you. Inevitably you will always have less data to predict people's behavior on that people have to react to. Still, a human mind is a simple one. With great power, no doubt, but essentially simple. It hates change.

Psychoanalysists are people whose job it is to analyze and predict human behavior with limited information. Generally they do quite a good job. Many con artists and magicians specialize in cold reading - deriving personal information by fishing for it and closely observing how people look, how they act. It is so effective many people confuse it with clairvoyancy. Even so, sometimes just a few actions can reveal a lot about a person. How they think, how they move. How they would react to a little piece of information. How easy would it be to manipulate them.

What these people do confirms that people are not snowflakes. Being unique is extremely relative - people go where the wind carries them. Rarely do people get to where they want to go, but instead end up where they need to be. That is a connecting line no matter the culture, no matter the race, no matter the upbringing. This is not to say all people are exactly the same, that would be folly! But people are quite similar in their motivations, in their reactions. There are a few types that cover pretty much everyone. Stereotypes, if you prefer. Very often these types can be confirmed with two little questions: 'Who are you?' and 'What do you want?'. The answers, however philosophical they are in nature, reveal plenty about the person. Who they see themselves as, where they are going, why do they do the things they do, what are they striving towards. Once you know that, you can predict their future behavior. Once you also get information about their past, you can predict the success of their future behavior.

Naturally nobody can know everything about an another person, which rules out absolute predictions. But with the information that can be gleamed, you can get pretty close. After all, we all remember how Target knows people are pregnant before they tell anyone.

With the ability to accurately predict the future we step on predeterminism. Not because we know what is 'supposed' to be, but because we can change it. While it is possible that we are 'supposed' to change the 'supposed'-to-be future, but at one point it all breaks down. Once we know enough, we'll be able to predict our own actions, which would therefore have to be locked in place. Fixed points in time. And yet if we know they are coming, what would stop us from changing the way that they are supposed to be?