VIRTUAL REALITY

I don't really take photographs. You should have seen this in real life, cos it's like the room that is packed behind the window, looks like it is part of the real reflection on the glass. For a moment, the real looked totally virtual and one wonders what is really behind that glass.

Meaning, to me, is the word used to refer to the relationship between an entity and a framework that perceived to exist because of the way it can describe the tangible manifestation of an arbitrary phenomena.

This in no way implies that there is a causative relationship between the substance of the framework and the manifestation of the said phenomena, but the perception of such a framework is essentially what gives birth to meaning, which in turn validates the belief in the existence of the framework.

For example, words have meaning because we perceive the existence of language, which in turn is a description of how people string symbols/sounds together toward a certain end. In effect, words are not used because of the particular meanings they have; instead, words have their particular meanings because of the ways they are perceived to be used. That to me describes perfectly how the process of compiling a dictionary is basically a process of documenting how words are used in society.

If we do not perceive that there is a valid order in the way words are used, such as in the case of a community of learners new to a language - then there is no perceived language for the community to validate. But if the community is perceived to speak a particular creole of a language, then whatever original usage of words by the community, defines the creole.

So if the framework is virtual and exists only as an abstraction of a different reality, then the framework does not in a real sense exist - and cannot form a reference point from which entities can derive a relationship. Which means that there is no meaning.

Thus, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless!

I think Kanji is the perfect imperfection.

I was looking at the character "美", designed in a logo with all four horizontal strokes of equal length. Why do we not write them with equal lengths?

I know there will be many explanations, but maybe one of them would be that, to make for strokes of equal length look beautiful, they must be perfectly equal; otherwise, the closer you get to them being equal, the more obvious how unequal they are.

And as long as they are not perfectly equal, the effort to make them equal and the subsequent failure stands out. Making them not equal from the beginning results in a more acceptable result.

So Kanji were not designed for perfect strokes. In fact, I have been finding of late that print characters which strokes are very well weighed, lack character. After trying to write kanji characters that have - character, I came to a conclusion. That beautiful kanji handwriting is not getting all the strokes well weighed, but getting away with getting them decidedly off balance. Which means that within the inequality of the strokes, there has to be a certain visual justification for its imbalance. This visual justification causes they eyes to see the imbalance, yet forces the mind to interpret it as a balance, resulting in the "character".

That being said, in order to understand what strokes can justify imbalance, and what just makes the imbalance worse, one needs to first know what the character would have looked like if it were perfectly weighed.

And since every character is different in its spatial composition of strokes, every single character needs to be learnt one by one.

And that, is where the art lies.

Watched Albert Bartlett's video about exponential growth.

Here's what it is in simple terms:

Let's say you have 1 million dollars.
You put it into investment which earns you 7% extra every year.
How much money will you have after 10 years?

The answer is 1 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07, which is just a little under 2 million.
Yes, at 7% a year you can double your money in 10 years.
The same growth applies for resource consumption.

Since the video tells us to do the math and not take figures for granted, I went to try on my calculation on compound interest and this was the result:



Which allows me to conclude several things:

1. If we interpret the graph as resource depletion, it would be a representation of how long the human race to continue existing and stay in the game, given the rate of growth he is pursuing. Of course the only way to stay in the game forever with a constant growth would be a rate of 0 growth. Otherwise, we will need to match growth with recessions in order to have a net 0 growth.

2. If a stable civilization would require lifestyles to remain consistent over at least 1 lifespan (70 years) to ensure continuity, we're looking at something much smaller than 1% growth.

3. If it takes 1000 years for resources to be replenished, we can deplete up to half of all available resources at a growth rate of 0.069%, after which we will need to have another 1000 years of decline at the same rate.

4. Interest on savings is somewhere between 2% to 4%, which means it takes 17 to 35 years to double. If interest is nearer the 2% end and inflation is nearer the 4% end, prices would have overtaken you in the 17th year of your 35 year savings plan.

5. If we have growth rates over 2.3%, resource consumption doubles twice in each generation, which would probably make tradition unnecessary since situations would have changed beyond recognition. Every generation would have to invent its own lifestyle, since what took the father one lifetime (70 years) to master, would take the grandson just his first 17.5 years to master - which is by current standards, high-school.