"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?

Mad people don't know they are mad. I know I am, therefore I am not.

"Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, "sense data". Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of human consciousness."

In essence, we change the world by reacting to it. We learn about the world, we act on that knowledge, and we change the world, thus changing our knowledge of it and our following actions. But what if there is no consciousness, only a vessel for it? Where does consciousness even begin, what is it?

In medicine, a person is called braindead if there is no reaction from the brainstem. That is to say spinal reflexes may work fine but regulatory controls (heat, CO2 levels) are nonresponsive, as is the person in general. Yet it has been shown that people in vegetative state sometimes can react to outside stimuli, just not with a visible reaction - the response can only be seen on an MRI. Sometimes people recover from vegetative states after being in it for years. Even modern technology has difficulty laying down the line from where there is no entity that could be called consciousness, there is no soul. Then again, medicine has never been an exact science.

"Each morning, we wake up and experience a rich explosion of consciousness — the bright morning sunlight, the smell of roast coffee and, for some of us, the warmth of the person lying next to us in bed. As the slumber recedes into the night, we awake to become who we are. The morning haze of dreams and oblivion disperses and lifts as recognition and recall bubble up the content of our memories into our consciousness. For the briefest of moments we are not sure who we are and then suddenly ‘I,’ the one that is awake, awakens. We gather our thoughts so that the ‘I’ who is conscious becomes the ‘me’ — the person with a past. The memories of the previous day return. The plans for the immediate future reformulate. The realization that we have things to get on with remind us that it is a workday. We become a person whom we recognize." - Bruce Hood

In this case, to be conscious is to be self-conscious. It is to know that you are a person who is currently 'active'. In this case, consciousness is lost if you fall asleep. Unless you are experiencing lucid dreams, in which case you know you are who you are and that you are in control of your dreams, but nobody else does. Thus, anyone trying to ascertain whether a sleeping person is conscious or not is facing a problem not unlike Schrödinger's cat. And in this case, as in Schrödinger's, the object of study can get really tired of your experiments and just run off.
Then again, there is no shortage of people reporting out of body experiences. If it were just one or two people among billions, it might be contributed to just normal insanity, but I'd venture to say most of us have had, even remember, at least one episode from our lives where something really bizarre and incomprehensible occurred where we weren't quite... in ourselves. A common neural misfiring no doubt, but a person experiencing such an event, and understanding consciously that he or she is not he nor she at that moment would presumably effectively mean they are unconscious. If that were true, you could be consciously aware that you are unconscious. Whoops.

So how to actually know if a person is conscious? This is made remarkably difficult as the person whose status we are attempting to assess might not just not know whether they are conscious or not, they could consciously be both. I guess what they say is true, "'Normal' is just a cycle in the washing machine.". Perhaps we are all mad. Just going round like a spiral, like a wheel within wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel. Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.

'One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.'

Now that we've assessed what a good leader is like[1], time to go wider. A good person. What is a good person like, how would he/she act?

There are plenty of people who don't appear to be very noble or 'good', but are told to have hearts of gold. People who don't act as good as they are, for one reason or other. Sometimes due to peer pressure, sometimes due to necessity, sometimes because they really are pricks. But the most objective way of determining whether a person is 'good' or not is by observing the actions. After all, it is the actions that we can observe, so far we have not been able to peek into the soul of a person.
While it is difficult to define 'good' actions, some generalizations can be made. For instance, a 'good' person would not willingly betray someone's trust if there is an option not to and not cause a more negative effect by the act of non-betrayal. In essence, he/she will choose the action presenting in the least harm coming to the fewest people.

"The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. 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

Now that is a difficult guideline to follow. Situations that befall us are rarely so black and white. Just look at the Doctor: there is a man with a choice, either let a single planet of his own kind perish or spell doom for the whole Universe. On a mathematical scale it is no choice at all, one life for billions. On a personal scale, it is trading all he knows, everyone like him, his home, his life, for people he knows nothing about. We were told that was the choice he had to make, yet it is not the choice that was described afterwards. Now we know the choice was not whether to save a few and sacrifice the many or to save many and sacrifice the few. It was whether or not to use a planet full of life as bait to lure yet another civilization to near extinction. It is not a choice that is easily made. If he chose not to, his planet would still have died. Then again, would a 'good' man kill millions of beings for doing what they believe in just because he fancies it?

But of course fiction is riddled with ethical dilemmas, it is what makes it so addictive and educative. But that is not to say ethical problems are smaller in real life. Take doctors for example. They have the responsibility of manipu... er... convincing people that what doctors deem to be best thing to do is actually factually the best possible thing to do. Even if the people do not accept that as the truth. Sure, belief in the medical system is a huge part of getting better, but often patients (and/or their relatives) are put in front of a choice where there is only a single accepted answer. And not just in the case of pulling the plug on braindead patients or harv.... er... donating their organs. Though you might think 'surely when a person makes a decision that's it, surely a decision is a decision', but that is only true if it is the decision the doctors want, otherwise it is only a temporary setback. While it may not appear ethical at first sight (that's why they don't call it 'manipulating' when it so clearly is), it serves a greater goal. That goal being gaining more resources to help those who would actually benefit from their help, instead of tying them up for people who have no practical use for the resources or ever will. Helping more people surely must be ethical, right?

"You cannot have a greater ideal with the smaller ones being compromised."

If a good person aims to be good, to be excellent, then his actions cannot in any step conflict with his beliefs. Then again, often if he refuses those actions, the consequences are even worse in regards to his beliefs. As Sheppard Book used to say: "If you can't do something smart, do something right.". Beyond that it's a crapshoot.

"If you want a glimpse of the future, talk to a student."

After all, who better to tell you? Anyone younger is likely to lack the expertise needed to fulfill their dreams, anyone older is likely to have less imaginative ideas and/or the inspiration to get started with something new. In a way, kids are thinkers, adults are doers. Students are right in the middle, ready and (sometimes) able to do both.

Most activists are young people, as are most early adopters. They are the ideal target for new products and campaign as after the first positive reactions there'll be plenty of bandwagoning. And who better to create those products for young adults and teens than they themselves? They know what is most required, most demanded, most desired. Is it silver cases, colourful boxes or the ability to multitask? Ask a student.

"Hang on a minute! I asked a few students and all I got were utopic dreams that won't come true for a few decades at the very least!" you might argue. And I concur, many people, young ones especially, tend to oversell the reality. They dream too big, too impossible. Yet, that is not a bad thing, it is what they should do. Because hopes and dreams are what guide them, what lead them to create wondrous new devices, schemes, pieces of art and architecture. It is the passion that drives them. "The whole point of progress is overreaching."

“The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist. Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say "It cannot be done."” – Provost Zakharov

Naturally not all people can be talented artists or impressive intellects. Some get beaten down by the flow of progress, some strive surfing it. Some just go with the flow, never contributing anything to it. Many are passionless when it comes to creating something for themselves, or for others. Leeches of the society, preying on the genius of others. Actually, not leeches. They contribute resources so that the innovators can keep doing what they do best: benefit the world with their ideals and ideas.

"All of life can be broken down into moments of transition, and moments of revelation."

The people not responsible for the grand revelations of innovation carry them through the transitive times. Without one type of people, there would be no other type of people. Even innovation rarely comes from single individuals, it requires plenty of pondering, holding meetings, proposing, discussing, redrafting, months if not years of fruitful work, leading to a mature and responsible conclusion.

"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."

Innovation never comes easily. The wisest are often called heretics, sometimes they are more than just verbally abused. Mostly they are ridiculed for creating something out of the ordinary. But after a cooling off period people become used to these new ideas, and come to accept them. It takes some time, but being a student that creates the world as we shall know it, it's not that bad.

People are a problem. That is why we can't have nice things.

Should basic income be a human right? 

The problem in today's society is that there are many non-jobs. These are vocations that do not produce any value to the society, jobs that are being created for the sole purpose of existing - it draws down unemployment. Yet the current economic model is based on producing benefit to the society: if you create value, you get paid. This is true for many 'classic' jobs like scientist, police officer, etc. These jobs serve a purpose other than existing. Now many people even see blogging as a job that earns them money while all it does is create more information that has to be taken in. That means taking less information in from credible sources and contributes to the massive information dumpyard we already have. Sure, it may bring some entertainment, but really, we have more than enough of that. Very few blogs actually initiate or propagate thought processes, but very many spread myths and theories with no logical basis.

Another problem is the amount of people earning less than would be necessary for basic livelihood. They are in a relatively inescapable rut - they haven't got the resources to make them hireable in order to get resources. They cannot benefit the society because they hardly make do on their own. Poverty is spreading and there is no cure in sight, except this new idea of having basic income as a human right. Perhaps saying 'human right' is too much as it would be relatively less absolute than human rights in general (which are far from absolute, see Gitmo and other 'civilized' torture institutions). The idea is to give every person a minimum income regardless of what they actually do. This gives every person the chance for a decent life, decent food, actual place to live etc. If they are employed, they earn more. But every single person would be able to contribute to the economy by consuming goods (now that many can afford basic necessities) and increase the chance for a 'poor' person to be employed (now that they can afford somewhat higher education, sometimes even the chance to buy proper clothing and take a shower will do). It would probably even decrease the amount of thefts - there is no longer such a need for it. This new system would eradicate the need for food stamps and other welfare systems. The rest of the money can come from more taxation - giant companies will increase their revenues even if taxes go up simply because more people will be giving them money. Windfall taxation for companies would motivate more research and other projects while regressive (yes, REgressive!) taxation for people would motivate more people to work (their net profit would increase relatively faster than in the case of flat taxation or progressive taxation). Naturally the 'basic income' would have to be the new tax free minimum.

However, this idea does not come without its problems. First and foremost is the lack of motivation to work. Currently countries (such as Spain) are rather full of people who decide not to work. The unemployment benefits are high enough in large households to not facilitate the necessity to earn extra wages. So these people simply glide through life in their bubble, going through their own relationships and slowly dying while not contributing anything to society. If we were to create a society wherein everyone gets paid no matter what they do, why would people do anything? People would have motivation only to take jobs that they enjoy, creating a gap in some professions (not many people aspire to being a janitor, for example). Many of these jobs (e.g shop clerks) can be replaced by technology but only to a limited degree. The present system works because people need the additional funds, or at the very least feel that they do. In the new system, there would be few people who would actually need additional funds to get by, which is part of the second important problem.

Among the many extraordinary qualities people possess, reasonableness is not necessarily the first that comes to mind, not when one contemplates the average person. And our basic income receiving people are very average. Many are chain smokers, alcoholics, drug addicts, gamblers. A lot of people would use the money for more booze (taxable), cigarettes (taxable), drugs and other vices. This effectively means counteracting the value being created for the society. Sure, poverty is considered to be one of the main contributing factors to alcohol and drug abuse, but that is largely due to unemployment. The new system does not create new jobs, on the contrary, it frees up people's time to do anything. And really, what do people do when they cannot think of anything sensible to do and have the freely available means to do anything? They do the insensible, and that is never a good thing. And I won't even get into the massive inflation all this would cause.

Yes, the system is a possibility. But creating it would require a huge change in taxation only possible if someone were to spearhead it with little opposition. To be frank, if the United States government cannot push through medical care (or funding therefor) for all of its citizens, pushing through financial security is but a fallacy. Even if it could be done, getting people to use the privileged resources for their own or greater good is impossible. Quite frankly this would work in one out of two situations: Dictatorship or Unification.

Either way to slice a melon, you still get a sliced melon.

One of the greatest mistakes of man is comparison.

Seems like an odd thing to say, isn't it? After all, everything we know is due to subjective understandings, concepts of things. Even Kant said: 'Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.'. We have distinct concepts: thought, intuition, idea. Each representing not only the meanings of those words, but also those similar to them. In other words, 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language' (L. Wittgenstein). Without comparing the words to the concepts surrounding them we would not understand the words at all. Comparison is what allows us to understand articulated (and less articulated) speech.

The necessity of comparisons is not evident only in language, but also in more abstract systems - mathematics, physics, chemistry, even philosophy. Without comparing different forces, we would not anticipate changes in trajectories. Without comparing integers, we would not be able to count. Without comparing chemical elements, we would not have a system called a periodic table. Without comparing ideas, we would not have praised epic literature and dissed the incompetent. We need comparisons for systematization. And we need that for the world to make sense. After all, 'Scientific theories are judged by the coherence they lend to our natural experience and the simplicity with which they do so. The grand principle of the heavens balances on the razor’s edge of truth.'. The scientific principles we have now are in place because they make more sense than any other theory that has been come up with so far.

However, comparisons limit mankind severely. Comparisons are based on our subjective reasoning and are limited to what we can think of. But, as language is based on comparisons, our concepts are limited. 'How?', one might wonder, but it is only a simple truth he'd need to understand. Our brains are processors, the neurons within work with binary operations ('signal'==1;'no signal'==0), the commands that guide the operations are words and concepts that have been linked to neural patterns and pathways. Thusly figured, any abstract thought not connected to existing concepts is unlikely (nearly impossible) to occur. If it does occur, it is a 'ghost in the machine', a random segment of code that manifests itself in something quite random. It is part of the slow process called 'evolution', but it can drive a brain mad. It is practically impossible to force such a bug to occur at will. After all, as they say, 'the limits of your language are the limits of your world.' (L. Wittgenstein). Innovation itself is slowed down by existing linguistic concepts.

Finding a good leader is difficult. Finding a good person even more so.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like if you were a dictator? Sure, everybody has. Everybody has had the idea that if they were in charge, things would be different, things would be better. Naturally, there would be great limitations to what we could do, human nature is sometimes unpredictable and oftentimes uncontrollable, especially by those that govern. You could enforce laws but there will always be someone breaking them or the laws would have no point. After all, laws are there to stop people from doing things they would like to, but should not.

A harsh dictatorship is better than any anarchy. In terms of societies, order is generally more efficient than chaos. It is why Feudalisms worked so well, it is why Nazi Germany and Soviet Republics were such efficient war machines. Everyone had clear guidelines to follow and more than clear consequences to face if the demands were not met. But these systems all collapse under their own weight because they need one seriously crucial bit that tends to be a letdown. The leader.

We learn from Machiavellian principles that a good leader is one who is necessary for everyone. Or well, preferred by everyone. That way the leader will remain in power - who were to desire the leader out of the way would be faced with few allies in the plot. It is better to keep a beneficial leader in power than to let him fall, even if you were to cause it. This means the leader must be efficient at managing resources and the happiness of those resources. The greater the country to lead, the more resources to manage. If the country gets bigger, more resources have to be managed. Even if there is a strong leader at the helm, finding a successor is a huge conundrum.

But being a leader does not have to be only being a head of state. A leader comes out in small groups of people as well. The tasks remain mostly the same. Assess what the people are good at, make sure they get to do things they are good at and enjoy doing (or an efficient compromise of the two). Keep the broncos from bucking, ease tensions between people as they work together. Find out who works better with whom. Keep everyone happy and motivated, and make sure they know they need you to keep the incredible machine running. Because you should not pull out the control panel of life support machines. Pull it out and it stops working effectively. Having a good leader is paramount.

"The difficulty arises out of the fact that authoritarianism must discourage criticism; accordingly, the benevolent dictator will not easily hear of complaints concerning the measures he has taken." - K. Popper

The leader position is not just about handling others. It is about communicating, and a large part of communicating is listening. That means also listening to people telling what you are doing wrong. In the case of states, it is tempting to censor everything negative. In the case of smaller groups, it is easier to simply ignore the negative. But negative is the part that is easier to learn from, constructive criticism guides us. We need opposition to the ruling government as much as we need friends that tell us when we make mistakes, or are about to. Human beings have the ability to learn from the mistakes of others, and the annoying tendency not to. But sometimes we do, and that is what guides us. You can't be a good leader if you do not improve upon your faults.

Would you be better than your clone?

"Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." - I. Kant

What if the content were replicated, the object copied? Generally we think of original works as having more value than mere imitations. With mass produced goods the difference is not as great as when we are talking about rare items such as paintings and sculptures. Because anyone skilled enough can create something beautiful or extremely useful once they've seen it, but coming up with an original idea and making that happen, that is significantly more impressive.

"Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements."

What if the copy was exactly like the original? Not just dot-to-dot or nail-to-nail, but even molecule-to-molecule. No possible way of distinguishing the copy from the original. Would the copy be less valuable as it is simply a rendition of someone else's work? Or would it be more valuable as making such a copy would be an extremely impressive act. Many of us remember the grand old film "How to Steal a Million", where the father said "Don't you know that in his lifetime Van Gogh only sold one painting? While I, in loving memory of his tragic genius, have already sold two.". Even now, copies are often considered to be as valuable as their originals. Museums sometimes display copies instead of originals to protect the originals, and there are very few people in the world who could discern a copy from the original. So why are the original pieces considered more valuable than copies?

"There are only two ways in which we can account for a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects: either experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make experience possible." - I. Kant

Original works do both. They are derived from experience and create the opportunity to learn from it, thus gaining experience. Copies are merely secondary mediators, similar to cyclic AMP. They do not create the signal, they transfer and multiply. In essence, they share.

What is more bizarre, many original works owe their value to the fact that whoever created them was or is widely known. The works might not have any purpose or innovative lines, and yet they grow to be extremely valued. Sometimes because of who created them, sometimes because of who bought them. But still the originals tend to be more valuable than their copies, because there is only one original. The supply is tiny, the demand slightly greater. Copies can be everywhere, thus increasing the supply and subsequently the supply/demand ratio. But in their essence, copies are as good or sometimes better than the originals, just less value is bestowed to them.

Silence is a powerful tool. Knowing when to break it is even more powerful.

Can you ever fall in love with a person or can you only ever love the idea of the person, what you imagine the person to be?

It is yet another question that Perception raises, but it is an interesting one nevertheless. After all, what can we possibly know about a person? How he or she acts in different observed situations. Oftentimes these situations' variation is rather limited, we meet the people in similar places, do similar things. Couple that with the known fact that people act differently not only in different places, but also when surrounded by different people (or when alone altogether) and you get a sad knowledge that you might not know the people around you as well as you think you do.

With love the matter is even more complicated. So you might not know your friends as well is it could be possible, you know them well enough. You become friends with them, get to know them better, and depending on whether you prefer them to be your friends or not, stop being friends with them (no need to make enemies, just keep them as acquaintances). Many friendships linger in the limbo without any decisive action taken. But love, now that is a bit more difficult to stop.

The problem with falling in love with or having a crush on someone is that usually the object of obsession becomes highly idealized. We become blind or extremely tolerant concerning his or her (or their) faults while praising their positive characteristics, sometimes even those that the person in question does not possess. In doing so, we fall in love with the idea of the person, not the person itself. But you cannot hold an idea, you cannot kiss an idea, and it is not an idea that we miss. It is the person. But is it right to be with someone about whom you have an image you know to be false? In fact, does it even matter?

If you know you have a mistaken understanding of the person of interest then you know you have a choice. Either stick around and see what the person is like in reality or leave and cherish the ideal image of the person. After all, reality can be harsh. Even you might be thought of as possibly daft so why hang around and remove all doubt? Do you really want to ruin the ideal picture of the person that catches your fancy or that of yours? And in the case of love, do you even have the choice of ever walking away?

Sometimes the idea may be better than reality, but sometimes reality is better than anything you could have dreamt about.

"I'm not ashamed. Cowards live longer."

Security.
In information security there are surprisingly few options. Generally it comes down to encryption, either of specific files and folders or of entire hard drives or flash sticks. It is quite sensible if you have information you would rather keep secret.

Lately, there has been a blooming of applications that allow the tracking and monitoring of stolen devices, even Avast! has a free solution for Android devices. If the device is stolen, its location can be tracked from a web browser using your account linked to the device, and if lucky, the camera might be opportune enough to give additional useful information. This is a great way to get your stuff back from ignorant thieves. It does not, however, help in the case of thieves that can anticipate it. The crux is that it only works if the thief tries to use the device with no previous fiddling.

In the case of computers (pun intended), the hard drive can be taken out and connected to an another computer, thus effectively not starting or running the tracking application. All not encrypted information can be accessed with ease, as would be the case if a Live CD or a Live DVD (or a stick, for that matter) were entered to the original device and an OS was run from that, so an another computer would not be necessary. This is what I imagine would be the least care taken by crooks to make sure they don't get caught, nevertheless there are plenty of cases where thieves check their own Facebook profiles on random computers, even in the house they are burgling in.

To keep your data safe from any prying eyes, you have to hide the information, that means encrypting it. Encrypting single files is good, but having single encrypted files on your data storage device causes unwanted attention on them. Encrypting the whole hard drive, a feature that does not rely on random applications, but rather included in the BIOS, is a neat alternative. It has its downsides, such as in the case of a computer failure, recovering your own data could prove to be troublesome. But that is exactly why we have encrypted spare copies of the important stuff. Encrypting your storage devices and important files on them adds that extra bit of security. Though the only reason why you would need that much information is when you really, really want nobody besides you to ever get to the information your have.

The popular 'activate-when-stolen' applications are neat, but they only work if the criminal is ignorant. Fortunately many of them are, especially those that are opportunistic in their nature. They could help get your device back, but they do not protect the information (passwords, files) stored on that device. To protect those, you have to turn the applications effectively impotent. That means you are unlikely to get your device back, but at the very least your data is safe - the device will be rather useless to the thieves unless they make a complete wipe. Then again, as with humans, two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. The question is, would you rather have your device back from a stupid crook or protect it from all crooks?