"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?

Existence is a problem. The existence of a soul doubly so.

What is the difference between a duchess and a flower girl? It is the idea around which Pygmalion was written, and almost a century ago, made a movie about.

Is it about the way they carry themselves, their posture, their speech, their used vocabulary? In this case it would be from within, a way of acting. Actually, it is the impression they make on other people, but an impression can be created, faked. It is what was tried in Pygmalion and it worked to a point. The real person was still left inside the fake shell of a person, a sad remnant of that which was. Sure, the quality of life was improved, even love was found, but it was the flower girl who grew on the love interest, not the fake duchess. In any case, what changed was people's perception of the flower girl, which is an another facet of this question.
Colonel Pickering had a nice attitude towards people. Pleasant, respective, everything you would hope for in a man. He treated even the most common flower girl as if she were a duchess. He was the kind of person that could be liked by everyone who met him. Henry Higgins was the opposite, he would treat any duchess as if they were common flower girls, unworthy of his great intellect. He had no time for common courtesy, all he cared about was getting the information through without a chance of misunderstandings or needless communication. Neither of them really cared who they were speaking to, they treated everyone the same regardless of status, behavior, attitude or the way they looked. They were the 'gods' of the tale, uninfluenced by outside happenstances, yet vulnerable to caring about their creation. That is the only thing that could change Higgins' attitude.
In the question of 'who are we' we then have the following observances: the way we act and look change people's attitudes towards us, people's attitudes towards us change the way we act, our actions show our attitudes. Therefore let it be known that actions and attitudes change the shell of the person at the very least. However, let's not leave the effect different attitudes have on the personalities these attitudes are directed towards marginalized. After all, every encounter, every happenstance that crosses us changes us, and we are the result of all past events that have occurred in our lives.

But who are we? Are we the shell of appearance and action that can be observed by others? Are we the attitudes incited by our presence? Or are we something deeper, some kind of hidden variable that could be defined as a 'soul'?

Scientia est potentia

Big Brother. The entity that allegedly keeps tabs on every one of us, even on the people who are it. The mysterious entity that apparently knows everything about us. It is an eerie feeling to be under constant surveillance, having your actions tracked, your secrets spied on.

You could say governments exceed their privileges by spying on its citizens. Espionage has been a formidable weapon against opposing nations, a tool that simplifies negotiations and an excuse to initiate hostilities for a very long time. It is an accepted practice that has been around for as long as we can remember. Even Sun Tzu wrote that half of winning a battle is knowing your enemy. The other half is knowing thyself, thus knowing what is going on in your own backyard. That means counterintelligence, spying on your own people to reveal threats from within. It is necessary to refrain your enemies the knowledge of your strength as ignorance can only mean guessing. Guessing means uncertainty, and it is generally an unwise decision to be the aggressor unless you know that it is a slam dunk, a certain victory. A wise man only goes to battle when the war has already been won.

Then again, Big Brother can only know what we give out, what we tell it. The details we share on Facebook, the thoughts we write to our blogs, the comments we make on forums, the transactions we do in banks. We are the ones who create the information trail that can be traced back to us. By openly revealing it to the world we are making it easily accessible to those that we want knowing about our private lives as well as we do not. Writing a blog inherently includes the desire to share it, otherwise it would not be up on some server that we have no control of and used by millions of other people. Otherwise it would not be online. A lot of people lack this understanding.

PRISM is a program that is run by the NSA and its task is to collect, store and comb through massive amounts of data from both passing packets as well as online information. It gains a lot of its current information from so-called network traffic crossroads, places where more information goes through. Data on the internet does not necessarily take the quickest or the most direct path, but it generally takes the cheapest. This is why these crossroads have been built, to enable huge quantities of packets run through as cheaply as possible as efficiently as possible. They are also perfect places for information gathering, every packet can be read as it goes through, on its way from the user to the server and vice versa. Many crossroads are located in the United States, which is why PRISM has an impressive field where to hunt for information. It is also known that some of these crossroads reside in the UK as well as elsewhere in Europe, and it has become known that the people who maintain these crossroads not only keep an eye on the traffic themselves (hunting for keywords as one example), also cooperate with CIA. The extent of the cooperation is not known, but there is no doubt in that some information is definitely shared. In fact, the EU is currently complaining about the US having spied on the EU while EU was giving the US the information and wherewithal to do it.

Officially, PRISM was created to detect terrorist threat online and if found, be able to show a trace of the possible terrorists' activities in the past. This means keeping logs on every person that becomes part of the system being observed, and as anyone is a possible terrorist, it can contain anybody. Officially, it is not collecting information about foreign citizens, and if it is, it is not its main goal but rather collateral action. When you are looking at internet traffic, it is difficult to say whose citizen is sending out the information gathered. Often all you get is an IP of the user, just a location where the user is currently situated. But the IP could be anyone's. The IP also only shows up if it has a reason to, packets to send, information to share and request.

In essence, PRISM is Big Brother's way of collecting information from users who have expressed the will to share information with the rest of the world, including the PRISM program. Allegedly this information has been thus far used to foil terrorist plots, and probably detect some espionage aimed at the United States. After all, it is a counterintelligence program, and it has to be used as such. As far as the users' privacy goes, think about what the information actually is that can be obtained by such surveillance. It is the users' own shared information, users' public activities, web searches, stuff people do by communicating with dozens of other machines. What's a couple more in the mix?

The good part of counterintelligence programs that survey information flow created by those surveyed is exactly that - the user controls what is surveyed. If you do not wish PRISM to know your date of birth, do not post it on some random server. If you do not want PRISM to know you have a keen interest in Justin Bieber, use more than one device to keep up with the latest news on him. PRISM might be able to connect a data flow to a device, but probably not a device to a specific user. With so much information going through it is probably searching for keywords that raise red flags, something suspicious to look at more closely, the rest goes by as if it were noise. Using multiple devices masks your identity because they might be able to profile the user of a single device, the users using multiple devices will undoubtedly create pockets of information impossible to be gleaned through a single device. Security through obscurity.

When user privacy is a problem, it is more of a problem about things that the user cannot control. These include but are not limited to security cameras, actions of other people, satellite footage. We can hardly influence what other people share with everybody else, and we can change the placement or existence of security cameras and public webcams. Yet they record our activities without our direct consent. But they are necessary for out safety, as is counterintelligence. We accept being recorded wherever we go, we've long accepted the United States' role as the world police that acts first and asks questions later, why should this be any different? I am not saying 'deal with it', I'm saying this is an inevitable situation, what matters is how we react to it. Surely it is no surprise that with all the information floating around on the interwebs, someone gets the idea of observing it. I could care less.

Globs of jelly are incredibly ludacris in their composition

I've mentioned neurolinguistic programming before. The idea being that a language that a person is fluent in has the language pretty much wires into his or her brain pattern, thus making the person vulnerable to attacks that abuse these predictable patterns in order to rewire the brain. The easiest language to do this in is, of course, binary. With other languages that people use more than just for an odd conversation with an URAL computer there is a distinct problem.

Redundancy. 'Rogue', 'mendicant', 'shake-rag', 'beggar'. All words that signify the same, but are different. 'A vile rascal', 'a miserable caitiff', 'crafty knave', 'idle truant', 'fornicating whore', 'filthy sloven', 'perfidious traitor'... word combinations that cause educated listeners to cringe. Having more than one word to signify a single idea, and the possibility to use two words signifying the same idea together is a huge mayhem for any programmer. There are just too many unnecessary surplus words in any language for anyone to be able to predict the specific neural activity for any single word - the neural patterns are connections, ideas linked to other ideas, and sometimes, ideas linked to the same ideas as with the case of synonyms. Any redundancy can create its own link, thus changing the pattern. In the end, it is like looking up 'recurrence' in a dictionary. For this reason, John Wilkins set out to create a language, a 'philosophical language' that would contain a single word for a single idea. This was necessary to achieve the next level of language - a language in which an untrue statement would be grammatically impossible. In essence, an universal language, a divine language for everyone to use to express ideas without any chance of misinterpretation or misleading. A language where meaning is possible only in its purest form.

A language that is hackable. If every word signifies a thought, and every thought is signified by a single word, the consequences of a word become predictable, mappable. The effect of having each word as an input, something heard or read, becomes accurately measurable, thus simplifying the hack - the easier it is to predict the outcome of a hack, the more efficient hack can be created. And really, what better hack to wreak havoc than a hack that alters this encryption, changes the way the words are linked. A new Bable.

Wilkins never achieved his goals because language is a tricky devil. Words have nuances, sentences have innuendos (if you do not believe me, try watching a some Japanese anime), stories have greater meanings. It is safety through security, a meaning between the lines. This is unfortunate, but it is how language has been created.

People are tricky as well. Even if there was a language in which a lie would constitute incorrect grammar, there would still be ways to go around the truth. Even now, officials in large companies keep saying they have not heard of PRISM, they have respected users' privacy (yeah, right, Google), they have not allowed backdoor entrance for CIA or FBI into their servers. But they do not say they have not given out personal information freely, they do not say they have not allowed any access to their servers. In almost everything they say there are loopholes. They do not lie per se, but they are not exactly telling the whole truth either. They might not have known that they were giving the information to PRISM, they might have known they were giving it to NSA. The fact that they might not be lying does not mean we get the information we are asking for. It is the age-old problem with truth serums, they may stop the lies but they do not guarantee cooperation.

Neurolinguistic programming would be a nifty idea, if we could simplify language. Alas, that is impossible as language is inherently complex, full of hidden messages and codes, mysteries wrapped in riddles wrapped in codes. Language is complicated because the users of it are complicated, devious and illogical. They have a tendency not to do what they believe is best for them and even if they do, they often think wrong. Ponder about it as I leave a quotation from Douglas Adams to ease your souls as you go on to your future endeavors.

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."

"I have a way. Is that better than a plan?"

Dreams. The perfect hiding place. It is where anything can happen, often it is where we face our greatest fears and see our grandest dreams. We might get some chances to actively direct how the dreams progress, what happens, who we meet. They often reflect the reality, distorted as a curved mirror would. The reflection tends to be abstract, which is why we have difficulties understanding it.

They are perfect for running simulations, except that because of our inherent bias - they are *our* dreams - we cannot exactly trust them to tell the truth. That's why they are so enticing, they bedazzle us with illusions of standing, of social change, of love. The problem comes in when they try to take on the reality. Dreams change how we think about things, they reanalyze situations and possibilities, sometimes randomly throwing in variables that at first sight appear random and even at the second, improbable. They bend our resolve, make us doubt our minds. They show us a world that is either better or worse than the world we live in. If it's better, it can create fanaticism. If it's worse, paranoia. I don't know which is worse. But having dreams, something to aim for, some goal to have in your crosshair, that is good. That... is necessary.


"I am a very important man. I have a tower."

"The only difference between me and a mad man is that I am not mad." S.Dali

"What do you want?"
"What am I doing here?"

Apparently keeping up a habit is difficult during busy times. It is difficult to keep your head in the game when it gets rough. The hardships tempt you to succumb to surrender, but you don't. It is not your way. It is not my way.

Every action, every aim should have a meaning. It might not be easily put into words, it could be completely abstract. Most often the meaning is the result of it. The experience gained, the people met, the changes to our inner selves. Sometimes we also get a nice paper saying that we achieved what we've been striving towards, sometimes it is an inner challenge that only gives us a warm feeling inside.

By surrendering, a large portion of the meaning is lost. Sometimes all. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it's worth doing well, it is not worth giving up upon. By surrendering, we tend to say 'what we did, we did without reason, and we failed because we did not understand the task we undertook, we made a mistake'. It means we did something we should not have. And we wasted valuable resources, often more than just time, to do... nothing. It does not have to be this way, giving up may be the right decision. We are almost always smarter after we have experienced more. Hence, the decision to give up on something today may be wiser than out decision yesterday not to give up. It may.

So if we grow older and wiser by the day, why should we not give up when we feel like the strain put upon us by the task we've chosen is too much, or is becoming too much?

"Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting?

Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival?

Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know?

Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace?

Could it be for love?

Illusions, Mr. Anderson! Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying deperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. [...] You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting.

Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?!"

"Because I choose to."

How did we get here?

What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?

Apparently, they do not learn.

Piracy is not theft, nor should it be handled as such. It is a way of replicating copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder (the person who has the right to copy and sell/give the right for others). It is a crime of intellectual property. And it is a problem.

It is quite impossible to stop piracy as it is extremely widespread. Then again, it is so widespread because it is so easy to do. It is easy to do because if it weren't, it would cause hassles to the legitimate customers as many DRM-protected software buyers have learned the hard way - an install number limit ignores the possibility of machine upgrades and the software check technique limits usability and wastes resources. Yet as everyone knows, every DRM can be broken.

This is why large companies have slowly become reluctant to creating products that require a single payment and thus we have tons of online applications and apps that constantly advertise something buyable. It allows children to drive up their parents' bills (or people their own bills) where it isn't necessary nor productive. EA has allegedly gone to such lengths that they don't publish finished products, but sell whatever they have and demand an additional payment to get the rest of the product. Pay a bit to get the taste, pay more to keep it.

Piracy is a problem, there is no way to deny that. But it is not just a problem for publishers and programmers, it is a problem for legitimate clients. It is because of piracy that new platforms are becoming more and more limiting for the end user, see Android and iOS for examples.