Still Churning

I'm finally doing it, I'm trading sleep for a blog.  Just for an update, for the last 4 months, I: 

1. Learnt game hacking level 0. 
2. Semi-learnt all of AP Chemistry
3. Learnt game hacking level 1
4. Semi-learnt Assembly
5. Got addicted to Loki then Rick and Morty
6. Learnt game hacking level 2
7. Gave up game hacking
8. Got addicted to movie summaries on Youtube
9. Tried to learn about circuits and physics
10. Got addicted to The Office
11. Did an "easy" "summer internship program"

See, if it is not software and typing, I can't produce. But anyways, back to the topic. The occasion is that I'm hosting a meetup for a blog which is not mine tomorrow, called Astral Codex Ten. And since I have actually only read titles of their blog posts for 3 months, I just "speed-read"1 all of it in ~2 hours2. After binging TV-shows, at least now I binged a blog. With 4 months worth of thoughts trapped in my head, together with binging tens of thousands of words, I finally chose to write a post3. Better late than never they say.

(If anyone is reading this blog, please add "I think" to any factual statement that is going to come :)  )

In-efficiency in Pinpoints

The first thought that I want to straighten out is: "Should we bother pin-pointing specific problems within complex issues?" For example, (I don't like criticizing schools, but here we go) saying that the problem with schools is that its too rigid, or the teachers aren't treated correctly, or its too stressful... I mean if one solves these specific problems one by one, it is definitely one way of impro --------- Neverminded, it does seems that we should pinpoint specific problems, todo lists for the win. And other efforts can use radical approaches. I was going to pull in economic bubbles, global warming, and poverty, but whatever.

Natural Selection of Cultures

The second thought is about natural selection of cultures. May the best culture win. What I mean by culture is practices/customs. It could be on the individual level, family level, friends level, all the way up to cross-countries level. Right now, as I see it, democracy masked oligarchy is winning, with communist masked oligarchy second. And of course, the culture of selfishness and hard-work on the individual level is also winning. 

I see society as a bag of chemical soup. This partly comes from watching and reading about brains (oh did I use to do that, embarrassing). Another part comes from how society now is very complex, and its very hard to control it holistically. People have manipulated pockets of populations, but on a large scale, its hard to imagine. Social media was able to attract attention and create desires, but that is relatively simple. It could also be easily done unorthodoxly with terrorist attacks/robberies. To manipulate the mass and convince them of a rationale is surprisingly hard.  --  --  I am all over the place again, but I am trying to say that an individual have little power over society, and observing culture and customs is one of the little ways to understand it (accurately, I mean I believe it to be accurate).

For example, how does one convey an idea/thought to a group of people? It is hard to surely know how to do it effectively. Our attempts at conveying an idea would heavily be decided by our environment/culture. Most people nowadays use PowerPoint, some use graphics, others use Q&As, humor, lectures... And just like natural selection, these customs adapts to their environment. Short 15 minute info sessions use humor, "geniuses" uses Q&A, data uses graphics. These "winners" are still evolving, and we won't know what will come next. People are trying reverse-classrooms instead of lectures, and we will see if that will thrive, speciate, or go extinct.

I was trying to reach for something with this idea, but it turns out to just be a fun perspective.

Human Perspective

A title from Astral Codex Ten's blog post illustrate this very clearly, "Book Review: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?" (it was an original idea, I can vow, just that they got there first and wrote a book) Our human perspective relies a lot on feelings, and I would believe that it is tainted (it isn't necessarily good/bad). We understand things as positive or negative, right or wrong, fact or opinions. Everything is objectified and needs to be something that we can grasp or classify, mentally or physically. I don't believe physics have positive or negative, just relativity. Things just go and react, its indifferent. Sometimes one gets so caught up in their perspective that they trap themselves in.

The human perspective is not the most effective, but because we operate with it, we are stuck using it. It is just a dead-end. Like the song "Fake your Death", there's no call to action (edit few days later: there is an action, and that is to quit trying to change "nature" or quit continuing the path that leads nowhere), its just acknowledgement. Just be acceptant and move on. (That's a downer, lol)

End.

Yep, I don't know what I was babbling about either. Its all unorganized mess. But its 2:22AM and I'm going to sleep without proof-reading, Great. Hope the meetup goes smoothly tmr.

didn't do art for myself again, but you know, TV-shows - much more better

1: "Speed-reading" for me is just skipping sentences, so I only get like 20-50% of the whole text.

2: Astral Codex Ten really need to rename their book reivews, shorten books, because everyone justs regurgitates their whole book. Though I know it is what everyone wants, calling them "book reviews" just digs a bone in my conscience. 

3: I am trying to avoid posts that are related to existentialism or self-virtue, cuz that got me to a great place, and now isn't getting me anywhere further. But on that note, I actually found a doppelganger that wrote a book: Robert Wright. He meditates to a degree where he is cognitively detached from feelings while not being detached from feelings. Just like me, only that I don't want to say that my blog posts and daydreams are meditation even if they fit the definition.