Dark Freedom

Let there be light so that man will know darkness. Let there be bondage so that man will know freedom.

And the peace of the darkness will be taken away by oppressors in shining armor; and the stillness of freedom by the knowledge that blinds.

And man will hunt down the heart of Truth and call it falsehood, so that the whole Truth becomes unknowable.

There is no lie like falsehood - know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.

The Times

From the hole to the pole
From the cradle to the bed
We were all born gold
But the world ain't straight
Bent and torn to fit in the fold
Better hiding in the numbers than be written off dead

I'm a devil I'm an angel I'm a sinner I'm a saint
I'm just trying all I can to survive my game
I was dealt a hand I hate to play
But the Times is a sado-masochistic orgy

We create words
We create minds
We create the Times
We shuffle the deck
And deal it blind.
Who is the master delighting in the pain?
Who is the slave pleasuring in shame?

You could be a minority
Turn the tides of time and you're on our territory
So come and learn
This is how we cope
Music is our party and rhythm is the dope
Don't tell me shit about your law and history
Step into our world and see our reality
It takes a bit of wrongs to live out our rights
But it ain't no biggie this is HOW WE FIGHT!

Maybe the disciples told the reincarnation story the opposite way. Humans should be at the bottom of the ten worlds, and you progress up to poultry when you are enlightened enough to realize how fleeting life is. And you give your life to those of lower understanding than you so they have a living chance. So every time you partake a meal, whatever your struggle, remember someone who was there before you, saw it to the other side of the tunnel and decide to give himself to you so you can live another day.

Come

Come

To the north to the south to the east to the west
I'm roaming the world and I'm looking for rest
I'm high on adrenaline and low on faith
Purpose is a meme and flow is a place
While I walk while I run while I sleep while I fly
Where do the enlightened find heaven in their skies
When I shit when I fuck when I'm sick when I'm fly
Freedom is a drug but satisfaction a lie.

Fee-fye-foe-fum
I'm living on an addiction of teenage boy dreams
Stretch the hamstrings bring out the drums
Age is a bitch but I'm not quite done
Take chances make noise believe in the fight
It's all an illusion but it's worth the run
I don't believe in the soul I don't believe in the past
I am who I am under my skin in my blood

To the east to the west to the north to the south
Humanity is a cancer but we're living it proud
Fee fye foe fum
While life says go till death says come.

Think about it. Our technology is changing our surroundings and forcing the species around us to evolve more quickly. And we use the same technology to delay death and slow down our own evolution.

Think about it. Have have we come to terms we are an abomination of nature, a monster - part organic, part machine? Or have we become subconsciously enlightened, that we are as "renewable" as the forests, destined to be destroyed when we have perfected our weakness through the power of our strengths?

Think about it. Are we ready to modify our own genetic code and fast forward our evolution?

There are always 3 sides to an argument - the proposition, the opposition, and the lesson. Which side are you on?

Bee-beep bibibip

Bee-beep bibibip
Goes my alarm for six-thirty AM
I start to recall what I need to be awake for
Saturday; slam snooze, abort routine, coz
I love waking up early to weekends in bed; Nothing beats
Being alive pretending to be dead
Let the world go on spinning upside down
My world is mine
Till my time is up.

Boom-pah pukumpukumpah
The beat keeps my mind from thinking too hard
I somehow got bootstrapped into this irrational obsession
With glass-walling passion, with playing my part,
I always feel like I'm never living the life
I look the role but I'm fake inside
I'm trying, I'm fighting, I'm working on redemption
I'm better with living when I'm more ready to die
I have death in my blood, you have death in your genes 

We were not made to escape but to live is to defy
Life is a tattoo we wear on our skin
It can't be erased, but we can make it fly

Boom-pah pukumpukumpah
We all need a little zen to get by
But zen doesn't mean you don't get high
We all meet somewhere between the truth and the lie

笑っても泣いても上手くても下手でも私の人生は毎日本番です！！！

We do not really experience time - we experience the discrepancy between our own change and our simulated version of time.

We panic when we start measuring out this discrepancy with our breath. If we breathed time the way a clock holds it between its hands, time, at least our simulation of it, would cease to exist.

We would be freed from our existential panic, and with any luck, we may indeed be freed even from ourselves.

In dance we synchronize ourselves completely with our simulation of time, and in meditation, we strip ourselves from our simulation of time.

Somewhere between dance and meditation is where we usually are when we actually experience the moment instead of our simulation of it.

But being in the moment is like being a raindrop falling into the sea, in that the line the separates ourselves from the sea of moments, disappears.

And thus we do not really experience time - because if we were really experiencing time, we would not be conscious of it. Ignorance is bliss, but how often do we get there?

Turns out ignorance is hard work!

The problem with life is that because of what we do to survive it, we tend to want to believe there is something intrinsically valuable about the pain we live through - to the extent we do everything we can to remember that pain. That is how most countries write their own history for their children. But we know that pain grabs you and cripples you until your mind can think of nothing but the pain, leaving you little to absorb what history really meant to teach you. It is really no wonder what history tends to repeat itself.

All history has equal value to us because it's a database of behavioral patterns. 

History should be analyzed as data, not sold to the younger generation like a patent portfolio used to make claims on powers based on historical precedence.

We are a connected people. All history is our history, because no history happened in isolation. 

What you get when you try to isolate regional histories is not a different history, but a biased narrative of history.

Move

Don't cry don't stop
Let's go let's dance
Move your hips to the beat
Let the rhythm take the run
Don't think don't recall
When there's music in the air you give it everything you have
The past ain't worth reliving with the present in your hands

All the pain all the living
All the need to be existing
All the mornings waking up to yet another day's routine
No ifs no buts no wanting out of this
You choose your own game you gotta play it to the end

Don't cry don't stop
Let's go let's dance
Move your hips to the beat
Let the rhythm take the run
Don't think don't recall
When the day is in your face you give it everything you have
The dream ain't worth the talk with Chance riding on your breath.

Move on the beat
Groove to the flow
You have your condition I have my shit
Stay with the pain
Live through the blow
These are the qualifications I know
Improvise innovate absorb liberate
Here's the situation are you up for it?

Be real. Be fake.
Be there. Be safe.
You only live once
What is the risk?

Don't cry don't stop
Let's go let's dance
Move your hips to the beat
Let the rhythm take the run
Don't think don't recall
When life is breathing in the air you feed it everything you dare
This is your legacy
What do you have?

Don't let anyone make you think that your dreams are in conflict with your situation or social responsibilities. Reality isn't a valid excuse for running away from your dreams - it is the environment in which you will thrive to make your dreams come true.

An actionable definition of : computer program

An actionable definition of : computer program

The experience a user gets when interacting with a machine called a computer, created by controlling how a computer behaves in response to stimulus (called input) from a user, or by controlling how a user responses to the perceived characteristics of the computer's behavior.

It just struck me that there is so little difference between a computer program and music. That the only time you cannot deny it is a program is when someone is running it. That the source code can no more be the program as can music be heard on a manuscript. That while the process of creating the program may be in isolation, the user is part of the program as much as the listener is part of the music. That programs rarely exist in vacuum but run in an environment full of things such as process scheduling priorities, third party libraries, logic implemented in hardware, just as music is rarely heard in the absolute silence of sounds and personal histories.

The term "user interface" used to mean the pictures on the screen designed by designers for real programmers to follow. Now it's called "user experience" but programmers still think its secondary. So let me say it: the experience IS the program.

Certainly, "real" programs doing heavy duty computing for highly intelligent professionals don't "need" a pretty interface. But whatever "ugly" interface preferred by these users, is perfect only because it is in harmony with the tone of the user'a behavior - just as not all music need words or harmony or melodies.

This brings me to propose that there is a 4:33 of computer programs - shutdown.exe. It is the ultimate expression of what a program can be: the experience of a program can extend beyond the runtime of the program. Shutdown.exe demands a response from its user like no other program does. Sitting through a whole four minutes of it, is like a form of anti-meditation - you can't really sit down and focus on experiencing it.

It is a sad thing that few will get to appreciate the deep conversations between the user and the computer in the 4:33 of programs. Even more so that many platforms are removing the idea of shutdown from the user's universe completely. In a way it's
like claiming that 4:33 isn't music.

There is a host of reasons why well meaning people are in the business of removing shutdown.exe - but it is comforting that reality is currently winning; shutdown.exe has largely been upgraded to demand-reboot-after-updating-while-you're-halfway-through-your-essay.exe. Sure, there is a reality out there where shutdown.exe completely does not exist, but for now, before you say fuck to that annoying pop up the next time - treasure it while it lasts.

An actionable definition of : reality

The collection of conditions perceives to increase or decrease your chances of dying.

Random Trains - Surviving Prostitution

1. Convenience is being able to enjoy a certain benefit without having to experience the unpleasant experiences usually associated with that benefit.

2. If you honestly think that the "unpleasant experience" is "the journey" that should be enjoyed, then the benefit is not a convenience but an inconvenience you honestly want to avoid. 

3. Part of the daily business of surviving is using whatever resources we have to provide this convenience to other people in order to maximize your chances of surviving.

4. When you start considering that your body and time are among these resources, people start labeling what you do "prostitution".

5. They do so while making sure their friends think that whatever they label as "prostitution" must be bad, because they are invested in "the journey", and being able to bypass the unpleasant experiences modifies the game in a way they are unable to handle.

6. They don't want you to think that your body and your time are something that you can think about as resources.

7. But your body, and by extension your health, and your time, and by extension your company, is the only things you really have.

8. However, their proposition makes sense. Consider that all other resources are things that don't really belong to you.

9. It makes so much more sense to take something that isn't really yours and give it to someone else in order to give yourself a higher chance of surviving.

Random thoughts

Random thoughts

Insurance is just a complicated way to allow you not to trust the guy who's gonna help you out in the moment of your most dire needs.

Selfies are the most graphic expression of our fear of oblivion.

Equality is treating everybody like a different animal, lined up from small to big on a very, very long sea-saw pivoting on a fulcrum so that the whole sea-saw is exactly balanced. Inequality is when the fulcrum is shifted so far the sea saw becomes a slide, and the big animals tumble on the small animals while blaming the small animals for not being big enough.

Reality is a drawing made by painting layer upon layer of dreams on the canvas of social constructs around you. How your masterpiece turns out depends on the color of your imagination and what you see on a canvas that is almost never completely white.

Perfection

The only imperfection that plagues our otherwise perfect being is our inability to see why everybody else is also perfect.

赤色の

赤色の
アプリ多いね
お兄さん

Depression

If depression has one thing to teach us, it must be that the present moment is the most powerful force at work in us, more powerful than all our personal history and collective civilizations combined.

TNBT: gamed natural selection test tube babies

TNBT: gamed natural selection test tube babies

Imagine genetic material taken from eggs and sperms made to compete with a battery of other genes to gain successful traits before combining to form a foetus. If the whole mate finding game is to have superior offspring, why not fast-forward evolution?

Whatever you're doing right now - stop for a minute and say after me: THIS IS THE LIFE! Cos there ain't any other life you're gonna get except the life you decided to live today!

通勤車

ギッシリと
押してきたのは
誰の尻

Maybe the tree of knowledge of good and evil isn't about the sudden awakening of man, but the birth of discrimination as a meme, from which man started going around labeling whatever doesn't match their opinion as evil?

Why world peace is impossible is very simple : we have all been brainwashed beyond being able to let our children really believe that the "enemies", the "criminals", the "terrorists", the "deviants", the poor, the foreigner, the "opposition", and the "uncultured" are exactly like us and are just as deserving of what life has to offer as ourselves.

***

Religions are man made. Cultures are man made. Politics are man made. Crimes are also man made. There is no such thing as crime in nature. By creating the idea of crime, we create a "society" and an "underground society" that cannot agree. Not that I support antisocial forces, but both society and underground society are part of a bigger picture.

For me the issue is beyond religion, nationalism, race, language, culture, history, and goes down to what we think collective living and societies are, spanning all forms of identity.

*** 

Selfishness is a key feature of our biology. So is empathy. But these two are not contradictory, but bound together by self-(less)-ness.

If you spread your sense of identity, your "self-ness" beyond your skin, beyond your kin, selfishness becomes essential for the survival of the Whole! In this light, heroes are simply superhuman-ly selfish people!

The beautiful thing about this model is that, when something goes "wrong", there is no need for punishment, no need to define Crime, because the Whole is in pain together. 

Live

When everything around you has become measurable, scientific, and predictable, you know that you have stopped growing and started dying. Growth is always full of chaotic power, brimming with uncertain possibilities, and a refusal to be bound and tamed.

Reading

Why do you read, if not to live lives you cannot live, that your understanding of the mind be widened, that your capacity for compassion be deepened?

Pain

Pain is the struggle against death. It is the same pain of growing up. It is the same pain of growing old. It is the same pain you fear when you have substituted that pain with shrewdness and wealth, when you forget that the struggle against death is never over. No, it is not over. It is only over when you have learnt to breathe that struggle like air. It is only over when death overtakes you and leave you nothing to struggle against.

Nobody else knows how to be you 24/7
You're the only one who's done it and survived.
Take advice but don't forget
It's your heaven your hell your world your life!

Focusing on individual differences is about not resorting to conformism, but it's not opposed to social cohesion. On the contrary, understanding the ugly details of how we are different makes us more integrated. A bundle of sticks doesn't break as easily as one single stick, exactly because each stick is different. 

10 things to do to stay young

1. Make young friends to stay in touch with what's happening.
2. Take care of your looks. Look at least relevant and approachable so you can make young friends.
3. Exercise. Young at heart is no good if your body isn't there to keep your heart pumping.
4. Try something new every day.
5. Start something you've never imagined doing before every year.
6. Listen to music you've never heard before. All the time.
7. Take risks. The older you are, the less you have to lose.
8. Discover yourself. If you think you know yourself well enough, you probably don't.
9. Seek new environments. New homes, new jobs, new lives - for some, new religions, new cultures, new countries and new families.
10. Stop talking about the past and dare to talk about the future. You're never too young too love, never too old to dream.

On slenderman

There's something profoundly human about the desire to believe - religion, philosophy, tradition, folklore, branding - are just some labels we use to artificially categorize things that feed on this mechanism because - giving things names helps us believe they exist.

Wednesday Survival Guide

Stress is the result of allowing yourself to be tricked into believing you are responsible for things you have no ability, authority, or social liability to achieve. Don't try too hard; you have a right to be here. Focus on letting go of what you need not control, and enjoy whatever you have in your court. Strive to be happy. When in doubt, eat, sleep, and exercise.

Silence

The wind never tries to blow
It blows because it is the wind.
When you sit in an open field
You hear silence
In the wind that doesn't try.

A duck by the stream
And all the fish in it
All live in the silence of the park
Because silence is the sound
Of not trying.

In Remembering what peace there may be in silence
You don't recall what soundlessness sounds like;
That would make you try too hard
To sit still.
Because silence is not soundlessness; silence is being conscious that doing is a kind of being;
Not a kind of trying.

It's the same 24 hours.

It's the same 24 hours.
Busy is what you do with it.
Happy is how you do it.
Fulfillment is why you do it.
Achievement is when you do it.

The secret of an awesome daily todo list: plan one little event a day that makes you happy!

TNBT : world history reimagined

Imagine : baggage free history curriculum

What if archeologist and educationists of diverse backgrounds got together and formed a cloud to design a cross-national history curriculum for children between 8 and 18?

What if a generation grew up learning about the world not from one biased perspective, but from the perspective of artifacts and documents, intertwined with an education in human behavioral psychology?

What if a generation grew up seeing world history as a universal heritage instead of walls that divide cultures?

TNBT

The next-next-next big thing : Imagine Democracy Kickstarter

What if it became cheaper to provide mobile internet access than sinking billions into election campaigns, minister pays, and top-down decisions that don't work?

What if you voted not for people, but for causes?

What if funds available were divided equally among all voters, and your vote determines how much funds the cause actually gets?

What if policies were drafted by a Parliament which can present proposals and analysis, but the Parliament has no power to decide - the power to decide were given back to the people?

What if the government were not subjected to the power structure they build up, but are constantly subject to the vote market, proposal after proposal?

What if the ballot ticket had not only YES and NO, but also RE-PROPOSE to demand the proposal to be redrafted?

What if all the time you spent on Facebook and Twitter, actually counted in Policy?

Before you were born

Do things sometimes feel like they're not going right?
Let me tell you a secret:
Everything is working out exactly according to plan.

Before you were born
You had envisioned this day - 
In fact, you planned every single event
So meticulously laying out every hour
In your Masterplan; and now
Everything is coming to life
Exactly how, exactly when, exactly where you had meant it to.

So the next time you're wondering
What's wrong? Why are things so?
Try instead to recall:
What was that single perspective you had taken
That made everything look right
Before you were born?

Pascal's Wager

The dilemma of believing in the Christian God on the basis of Pascal's Wager results in the strange situation where the one thing you believe in more than God him/herself, is the value of your personal gain. If you keep that position in your faith, you will break the 1st commandment. If you don't keep that position, you invalidate the reason you chose to believe in God, releasing you from the faith. Applying Pascal's Wager to another religion would therefore be much simpler.

Love

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not compare, it does not rank, it does not favor top performers. It does not pathologize, it is not profit-oriented, it does not make short-sighted responses, it cannot be quantified for arithmetics. Love cannot be abused to hurt, but rejoices when the hurting are set free. It always takes the blow, always believes in the face of betrayal, always hopes when things go wrong, always runs the full marathon to the finishing line.

Without the Grid

Without the Grid

How do you invite someone home for dinner,
If the land line
Is digital somewhere?

How do you get an invitation card delivered,
If logistics is real time
And digital?

How do you buy your ingredients,
If your retailer pays rent
Digitally?

How do you locate a local farm
If you cannot search that
Online?

How do you drive over
If traffic lights
Are controlled digitally?

You'd walk over to your friends house
Which is probably within walking distance
Because without the Grid
You'd probably not get to know
Someone living that far away anyway.

TNBT

The next-next-next big thing :  Just-In-Time Manufacturing





Imagine: You order a new handphone, selecting the customizations you want - features, design, customized printing and name engraving. You click "submit", and your new phone arrives the same evening.

Imagine: You enter your credit card number and click "submit" - and in that moment, an autonomous car starts driving your way, loaded with the 3D printers, weaving and painting robots and everything to manufacture your order. The car's route is optimally planned, considering road conditions and manufacturing time. When the car hits your doorstep, your product has just been sealed into the box.

Whatever you are most afraid of, will plague you for life - not because others are free from it, but because they are not obsessed enough to notice it come and go.

Happiness

My definition of happiness : the emotion invoked (1) by a memory associated with the release of dopamine, or (2) by the actual release of dopamine through the reward-motivation mechanism our brain uses to make us prefer actions that lead to decisions favorable for survival.

No happiness, no survival.

leadership

woke up this morning thinking, what is the most important skill leaders must have?

and it seemed to me today, that this is not engineering, not financial planning, not scientific belief, not cultural depth, but story-telling.

leadership falls apart once your people stop believing in your story. different cultures use different narratives, and the leader in  that culture must master that narrative.

and this leaves me with the thought - there's something very magical about royal families and monarchies, because instead of telling the story, they have become the story. they are the people's ideals, incarnated in flesh. there's something god-like in them, in both their charms and their failures... but of course the people have stopped believing in this story...

what is the story your leader is telling you today?
is it working?

Diversity

1
Is anti-diversity not a tolerable position in a framework for diversity?

2
If we got rid of all extremely extreme extremists, would moderately strong opinions get recalibrated as the new extremist? If that's a natural response I hope extremists stay as extreme as possible!

Doesn't it frighten people how the society of sighted people is so dependent on the illusion of sight?

Ruthless

Culture is an ideology.
Religion is an ideology.
Political thought is an ideology.
I think we're so tame towards ideologies - we could let ourselves be more ruthless in tearing them up, changing positions, and fighting against something we used to believe in. We are not ruthless enough towards ideas, and not gentle enough towards people.

Art is the ultimate display of power, design the ultimate display of understanding.

It's easier to prove that homosexuality is genetic than to prove that religion is real. Religion has the potential to be as real as any suffering we go through, but if religion chooses not to be genuine in the name of truth by refusing to feel the pain within us, all doctrine lose their power and religion becomes an imaginary "lifestyle choice".

The Houses That Live In Us

The Houses That Live In Us

If you lay yourself in bed and close your eyes
And allow yourself to walk into the darkness in your mind,
You will find, dimly lit,
Spaces that stage you dreams -
And if you try to light that up
You will find in these rooms you used to live in.

If you allow your mind to take control of that space
And move furniture into existence
Arranging them once
And then again
Reversing how you rearranged the room as you would reverse time
You find yourself
Clearing outwards by your sheer will, a space of time -
Your childhood room, your new house, your boarding school -
You will find the spaces that house your memories
Well and alive.

If you allow yourself to sit in one of these spaces
And soak in your surroundings
You will smell the same smells and hear the same sounds and feel the same warmth
Welling up in you -
You connect with your past and realize
What treasures you have stored up,
Safely locked away,
In the heavens of the darkness
Of a night alone in bed -
You will be cradled in the warmth of those who have crossed paths with you
And fall asleep, excited about tomorrow,
As they call out to you in whispers
See you tomorrow, goodnight.

Science

Religion and Passion are always more seductive than Science because science fails us in two areas: its processes and its practitioners.

Science fails us because it does not consider inspiration to be part of its processes - science is based on data, and the data we collect is limited by our ability to imagine. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist - and throughout the times we have depended on visionaries who think up new ways to measure the world around us, or accidents in science that lead people do discover the same. There is still so much of the world out there that doesn't exist in the eyes of science. Religion and culture always stand by us to assure us that we need to keep on believing, until science catches up with reality.

Science fails us because scientists always promise the ideal but reality delivers the sustainable. Scientists are very exact people - and that goes into the perception of their responsibility to the world. If an economic pressure prevents a scientific discovery from benefitting society, scientists don't own up to the failure. If a scientific theory is difficult, it is always the layman's fault that he doesn't find science accessible. I remember it was promised that music distributed on cd will be cheaper than music distributed on cassettes but that never happened. Climate scientists try so hard to prove climate change, but the fight is political. Activists on the other hand know how to connect facts to reality.

Scientists owe the world as much as the world owe scientists. The failure of science isn't the failure of the institution of science. It is a witness to how we work best together because we're all different in different ways.


iPhoneから送信

Random

Random

我认为无所谓人生的目地，只有你本身的目地。生存不是人生的目地，因为生存就是人生。还句话说，重要的，是你为了谁活着，为了做什么活着。思考人生＂目地＂的，是creationist 的paradigm.

Right and wrong in a society is never established by science but by
norms and ideals. Norms change and so do laws. Slavery was abolished but it's not based on scientific proof, but because someone challenged the norm. Courts don't exist to uphold "the truth" - that is not as importance as its calling, which is to dispense justice. Law is not about truth but about justice.

Religion is a free choice too. If you want to believe in a mixed religion you can form a new religion or denomination. It not common but it happens. And people do live in mixed environments where the the father is one race and religion and the mother is a different race and religion. In Japan, people go to the temple during new year and get married in churches. That is the norm in Japan.

I think when it comes to education students should be taught everything. Including both science and religion and politics. They should be taught both evolution and religious beliefs and sort it out for themselves. If science is self explanatory you should have faith that they will choose whatever works for them.


iPhoneから送信

Science

You seem to think that if you add all the circuits together you can get an iPhone. That's not true. The iPhone is an invention, not a scientific one but a cultural, a social one. You need all the science to put it together, but if nobody dreamed it up, no amount of research can create an iPhone.

Science can lead to discoveries but discoveries cannot change peoples lives unless someone dreams about using science to do so.

Science is a method of finding answers. It is inspiration that asks the questions.

Sometimes questions are answered by other fields, such as Maths. Maths knowledge is created by mathematicians who imagine mathematical hypothesis and proof them using mathematical logic, many of which can only be proven using even more mathematics. There is no science (experiments) here.

Another is in the field of literature. For example, the Korean Hangul alphabet was created with the inspiration of ying and yang. Without the Korean alphabet, Korea would not have a distinctly Korean identity and language which created the basis for Korean communication and literature.



iPhoneから送信

Reason

In an ideal world, reason would be unnecessary. You would be happy just because. Logic is just another basis for legitimacy, built to enable negotiations between peoples who did not previously share a common cultural language for communication.

TNBT

The next-next-next big thing : Big (Data) Brother 2.0 (Computational Legal Intelligence).

 Imagine: You are unhappy with how you got treated at work. Legal Intelligence will give you the laws you can quote to help your company "understand" your problem.

Imagine: What your vendor did seems questionable. Legal Intelligence will give you the laws to quote to help your vendor come to terms with their legal responsibility.

Imagine : Entering your scenario into a website, and it will tell you all the relevant laws and policies, past judgements, and gray areas, and give you a sample approach how you can use the law to win your case. This is the rule of law, by the people, for the people.

TNBT

Next big thing : ubiquitous purpose-specific computing ("upc")

Imagine : direct mail flyers in your mailbox that interact with your mails to give you ads that genuinely interest you, without privacy leak.

TNBT

The next big thing : wearable robotics?

Imagine : Typing gloves that let you type on an imagined keyboard with full-keyboard touch when you type.

Imagine : programmable nanorobotic underwear that guides you in martial arts and dance

Imagine : smart glasses that also respond physically to turn your head to look at what you're searching for.

   

Let me change my question

Let me change my question

If you fill a glass up to the middle with water, is it half full or half empty?

If you submerge the same glass of water into a tank of water, is the glass full, or is the glass empty?


iPhoneから送信

Emptiness

Emptiness
A room can become full because it was empty. A room can be empty because it has four walls. If a room had no walls, how can it be full, how can it be empty? What is the purpose of emptiness and fullness? Is your heart full, or is it empty?


iPhoneから送信

Religion

Religion is like a bank that assesses your credit risk based on the strength of how much you believe in your future, and then funds your dream with an equal amount of confidence so that when you invest your energies in your dream, you have enough liquidity to negotiate the uncertainties that stand in front of you.


iPhoneから送信

Chaos

Chaos

Your intelligence was not created to understand chaos.

Your intelligence was created by chaos.

You see order in chaos because the chaos of your mind resonates/correlates with the chaos of the universe.

It is not the irregularity, but the seeming regularity, that is the flaw in our experience of chaos.


iPhoneから送信

Free Fall

Rock-a-bye, baby,
On the tree top.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all.

Between birth and death, we happen.
We fall towards the life-bearing earth
Like babies off a tree
Living in a free fall.

Between wake and sleep
We cut time up into an eternity of nanoseconds;
Between truths we lie on
Our imagination of life on the ground.

Between now
And the eternity our minds can conceive
We hold on to the fall, believing
That only the fall, will set us free.

What is your definition of forgive?

What is your definition of forgive?

I think forgive means deciding not to act on a misdeed against you towards the person who offended you.

Not forgiving means you plan to take revenge on that person sooner or later. It does not matter if you have forgotten what the misdeed was. It is possible to forget but not forgive.

Forgetting means writing off an event that occurred, meaning you decide to deny that a specific misdeed was ever done against you.

Changing what you believe or how you function in response to a misdeed against you is simply learning, which is independent of forgiving and forgetting.

World history shows us we are good at forgetting, bad at forgiving, and almost never learn.

All combinations of learning and not learning, forgiving and not forgiving, forgetting and not forgetting are possible.

Love gives you the ability to reinterpret an event so that instead of deciding that a misdeed was done against you, you decide that there was nothing wrong with the event, and therefore nothing to forgive.


iPhoneから送信

How religions rationalize unbelieving

How religions rationalize unbelieving

Christianity: if you don't believe, you were meant never to believe.

Buddhism: if you don't believe, we still win because you actually do believe. its just that the time hasn't come for you to admit it.

Atheism: if you don't believe (in atheism) you could use a (downward) leap of faith.

Others??


iPhoneから送信

Stigma is a carpet under which politicians sweep problems they cannot solve

Data says: Happier countries tend to be less religious, but less religious countries do not tend to be more happy. Yeah, makes sense. Happiness is something you decide, religious or not.

Thinking about Service

Apart from upbringing and all, Japan has excellent customer service because customer expectations of the product has been leveled out by offerings that are consistently fast, good, and cheap (when compared to similar offerings), such that the most effective differentiating factor becomes service.

This leveling out may be coming to an end though, as Korean and Chinese companies are matching offerings that are just as fast, almost as good, and much cheaper. It remains to be seen whether economic benefits will affect the signature level of service offered by the Japanese, or whether Japanese upbringing will prove service to be something that cannot be created purely through economic incentives.



iPhoneから送信

10 ways to evaluate a market

Translation is an Art

Translation is an Art

The challenge of translation, is not so much about whether the listener has understood what the speaker had said - a job increasingly taken up by machine translation and AI. the challenge of translation, is about whether the listener understood anything that the speaker DIDN'T say - something that happens even when the speaker and listener are speaking the same language.

When you are listening to a translation, you are always listening to something the translator has created as he transplants an idea from another language, creating a context of words that highlight what he thinks the speaker intended to be read into, hiding what he thinks the speaker intentionally left ambiguous.

It can be a dangerous thing to read between the lines of any translated text, without first learning about the purpose and process of how the text ended up in the language you speak.


iPhoneから送信

Dao

In the beginning there is dao. Then perfection was invented. Perfection gave birth to imperfection. But both perfection and imperfection are dao.

Knowledge, Intuition, Experience

Knowledge, Intuition, Experience

No, experience doesn't allow you to skip steps. Intuition comes close by letting you take calculated risks when skipping steps. Experience on the other hand, lets you run through the steps so fast that you're done before someone can spell out all the steps. But knowledge through analysis, that's what allows you to skip steps.


iPhoneから送信

Pre-Scientific Remedies

There are products that don't claim any effects.
And products that imply without claiming.
And products that claim without backing it up.
And products that back it up with folklore.
And products that back it up with positive user endorsement, ignoring the negative dataset.
And products that back it up with endorsement from researchers of dubious bias.
And products that back it up with dubious research.
And products that back it up with fake research papers.
And products that back it up with real research results.
How do customers choose between these products but try for themselves?


iPhoneから送信

知之为知之。不知为不知。是知也。
true knowledge is admitting both what one knows and what one doesn't.

聞くは一時の恥、聞かぬは一生の恥。
admitting ignorance is a temporary embarrassment , feigning knowledge is a lifelong shame.

Admitting knowledge is honesty... and feigning ignorance is? Probably profitable!?

Thoughts about war and tradition

Thoughts about war and tradition

The strength of a select, cooperative few is power, the strength of the diverse non-cooperating multitudes is resilience. And evolution is the dialog between them.

Power is always attacking resilience head on and resilience never fights back. It holds on until power runs out of steam.

And so we always have war and peace, the age of power and the age of resilience. Sometimes we have both at the same moment, in the same place.

In peace we build up and pile up all sorts of walls against enemies that do not exist. In war, the few come together and tear down the walls they can. And when we continually get the most diverse of people to build up walls that are strong in the most unique ways and then get the most powerful of people to tear them down, what we have left, is that which cannot be taken down.

Tradition and heritage is thus time proven. Except that the speed we build up and tear down isn't linear but exponential. Tradition isn't entirely about preserving what the dead have left us - it isn't carved in stone. Tradition is always in the making. And in the age, more so than ever.


iPhoneから送信

Is being a housewife a real job?

Is being a housewife a real job?

My short answer: it is a calling, not a job.

The female pronoun is consistently used below but only for convenience. Similarly, housewife should be interpreted also to mean house-husband.

The debate has been going on forever, but here's my take on the conditions it should satisfy in order for her services to be evaluated to be worth as much as services provides on a professional basis.

1. Do the customers have the freedom to comment and freely criticize on the services provided? Are customers allowed to compare the service of providers of similar services as an evaluation of the services?

2. Is it a monopoly? How are the conditions regulated?

3. What is the penalty for performance that does not match up to the customers' expectations?

4. Who is the employer and who are the stakeholders? How do they evaluate her performance?

5. Are services provided performed to the highest possible standard achievable, or is there any grounds to suspect negligence?

My conclusion is that being a housewife is more like a vocation or calling, like priests and activists. It is a noble role, but the services do not qualify to be rated in monetary terms; a housewife deserves to demand to be provided a standard of life that is worry-free so she can focus on the calling. And since it is a calling, all rewards should come from the providing of the service. Any additional material or monetary rewards should be received in exchange for a "real" job that she must perform outside this calling.


iPhoneから送信

4 kinds of people

I think there are 4 kinds of people. Those who have a need to know and are able to learn (scholars), those who have a need to know but do not have the ability to learn (believers), those who do not have a need to know but have the ability to learn (evangelists), and those who do not have a need to know and do not have the ability to learn (non practicing believer) . 

Lottery

aka The Power of Personal Testimony

Q: Let's say there's a 3-digit lottery for one million dollars every week, in a country of 3 million people. I set up a fortune telling web site called lucky-number.com and give out lucky numbers. It's free, but if you strike it a second time, you have to give me a 20% cut on your second winning. That's just 200,000 out of your 2 million. Fair? Do you think I can make any money?


Disclaimer : I'm sorry if I did my math wrong!

A: Firstly, given that numbers are given out evenly, every week 1 out of every 1,000  will strike lottery. Thus the chance of anyone striking using the given number is 0.001. Let's call these numbers 1,000 and 0.001 n=1000 and p=0.001.

We always give people a second chance when they don't do well. That is, that they need to lose twice in a row to stop buying - meaning unless they lose the first 2 times consecutively, they will end up trying at least 3 times. So we first consider the following scenarios:

(win, win, win) 
and believe that the site is true
 The possibility of striking (win, win, win) is p³, which means 1 out of 1,000,000,000 people will get this. since we have only 3 million people, let's assume this does not happen.

(win, lose, win) or (win win, lose) or (lose, win, win) 
and conclude the site is mostly right 
People who experienced (win, lose, win) and (win, win, lose) and (lose, wine, win) will conclude that the site works most of the time. So the probability of people thinking that it mostly works is 3(p²(1-p)), meaning 1 out of 333,667 people will feel that the site is useful. That is 8 people in 3 million!This means we would get either 8 times our 20% cut which is $1.6 million by the 3rd draw!

(win, lose, lose) or (lose, win, lose) 
and conclude that the site changed their odds from 1 out of 1,000 to 1 out of 3.
The probability of this is 2((1-p)²p), meaning 1 out of 501 people will come to this conclusion. For a population of 3 million, this is 5988 people!

So now we have 8 people convinced that the site is mostly true, and 5988 people who are not totally convinced, but "feel good" about the site.

Now, let's say each person is directly connected to 10 other people, and they tell these 10 people about their lottery. And their up to their friend's friend trust what they said - beyond that it's too far away to be trustworthy. Let's call this number c=10.

So many people can these 5996 people reach?

So we have friends who number 5996c and friends of friends who number 5996c², and if we include the initial 5996, this is a total of 665,556 people. In a community of 3 million, this is 22%. That means 1 out of 5 will feel good about the site! If you're connected to 10 people, it means you will know 1 to 2 persons who feel good about the site!


Let's say these 665,556 people decide to buy a 4th time.

(win, lose, lose, win) or (lose, win, lose, win)
Those who struck 1 time the first time, would have to pay us if they strike this time - the 5988 people who stuck (win, lose, lose) or (lose, win, lose). What's the odds?  (2((1-p)²p))p, that is one in 501,001. Bingo. We have another winner. Add $200,000

Unfortunately this doesn't grow our "feel good" crowd. But still, with some optimism, we would have collected $1.8 million by the 4th draw, all by giving out random numbers!

Moral of the story
1. Personal experience does not constitute statistics
2. Don't take information second hand.
3. Almost All isn't anywhere near All. When you listen to a testimony first hand, don't skip the details cos that's where the devil lives!

What is God? My take

What is God? My take

I think human beings are at the top of the pyramid very largely because of persistence, which comes through working hard at something though logic says that it is just impossible. This form of self delusion we prefer to call hope or faith or believing in oneself taken to the extreme IMHO is what birthed religion, which crystallized in the form of God. Subscribing to the concept of a real God then allows the everyday man to invoke a deep conviction in the realizability of his desires, and that conviction drives him to make his dreams real. In that sense, God is a kind of technology, ready for direct application by anyone who chooses to invoke it.

Consider asking another question. What is the Internet? Is it a specification of any framework that can support something like facebook and Google? Is it the collective sum of servers running it? Is it the tcpip stack? Is the Internet still the Internet if the middle layers are swapped, or if it interfaces with other networks by way of SDN? Is it still the internet if it gets fragmented into two or more disjoint networks? Which disjoint fragment will become the internet? Is it still the Internet if I use a quantum network to steam real time content from my brain? Will my brain become part of the Internet? Or is the Internet defined to be the sum of everything accessible from - the Internet?

I think the Internet exists in a real sense because we as a global community has come to a consensus of its existence. And this consensus of its existence is essentially what makes its existence real.

We tend to think of God as a person, so defining God as a non-person becomes somewhat heretic, but wait, what about the Internet when non-human AI interacts as much as human beings on the Internet? Will your brain be as much part of it as the non-human counterpart? Will it be then fair to say that the Internet is both alive and not alive?


iPhoneから送信

Privacy

on privacy

another daydream post. i'm not an expert.

i read somewhere that the concept of privacy is a recent invention, and that people nowadays don't think of wanting to preserve their privacy, rather, they consider it as asset to be trade-able for goods or services, which might imply that the concept of privacy as a kind of personal freedom in the so called "traditional" sense, may already be fighting its last fight.

i have previously read of a few viewpoints on why you need privacy which i shall summarize briefly below:

1. Nobody is perfect. Given the correct conditions, some law can always be used against you, even if you think you have nothing to hide.

2. Knowledge is power. Knowledge of who you are and what you do (1) psychologically give people power over you, causing you to act differently by knowing that you are being watched, and, (2) gives people a means to social engineer a situation into deriving some advantage off you.

3. Victimless crimes are committed in private when people are experimenting or trying to sort things out and figure out their lives, and that ultimately leads to progress of the individual or society as a whole.

but i stopped to think today.

Human society has so far been in its nature once which is close-knit, where people are deeply involved, interacting which each other in ways that are beyond what the law provided clear-cut rules for. There always are people who want to get into your head or your pants to get something out of you so that they can gain some kind of advantage, or so that they can "help" you. Everybody always needs everybody's help so that the "greater good" is finally achieved.

Such an environment keeps society together. Put it in other words - society is self-perpetuating through the deployment of mechanisms such as the use of power to directly or psychologically affect or limit any actions to modify it. I say "deploy" because I think the State consciously created these mechanisms ether directly or indirectly. And given free rein, this mechanism can be exploited, perhaps, to the point where society is perpetuated for the sole purpose of perpetuation, such that individuals are continually born into the society, work for the society, but derive no innate pleasure or advantage from doing so.

The concept of privacy to me, is basically saying "beyond this line, I can manage on my own". Which means, privacy for me, is that line we draw to say, okay, this is as much you (society/State) need to be bothered about.

What if, the mechanisms that perpetuate society, do not work anymore?

What if one day, someone doing a term in jail is viewed at with the same attitude as someone who paid a speeding fine? And nobody would care less if who you slept with as long as you are doing a great job as the president?

How would privacy change?

Of Adam and Eve and Marrying Cousins

Of Adam and Eve and Marrying Cousins

Disclaimers: I'm not a creationist. Neither am I an expert on the game of life. This is not a paper, just a kind of mental scribbling aka daydreaming.

One of the problems I had with the Adam and Eve story was that of inbreeding, that inbreeding raises the possibility of recessive traits appearing, lowering the average survival ability of the population in general. How do cultures that practice reproduction with relatives survive? Does inbreeding mean that you end up with an inferior culture?

Enter: the game of life.

If you're unfamiliar, the game of life is simulation "board game", formed with a grid like a chessboard, where you place pieces that either "grow" or "die" according to rules as simple as the following set (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life, where "cell" refers to a square on the board):

1. First you start with a starting configuration, where you mark certain cells as "live". All other cells are dead.
2. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
4. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
5. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction. 

That's it. And just depending on the initial squares, the game can keep running for thousands of generations. You might want to try out some configurations on the wiki page at http://www.julianpulgarin.com/canvaslife/and see it for yourself.

What does this mean to me? That while inbreeding is the causes of a lot of genetically-based disability, it is not in itself fatalistic. But rather, whether or not we end up with an end-game where everything dies or everything keeps on growing, or everything is stabilized, depends also on the starting configuration - and that starting configuration, must be instantaneously created or there must be one instant where the starting configuration became true.

That is to say, if the creation theory needs to be true, it is not just the mechanism that needs to be proven, but that the starting configuration needs to be found. So maybe, just maybe, just because God created Adam and Eve, doesn't mean he didn't also create Adam and Steve.

Common sense

Common sense: a habit or protocol people are obsessed in propagating because of a perceived benefit derived through a mechanism or reason considered taboo.


iPhoneから送信

My 10 star hotel rating standard

My 10 star hotel rating standard

For each star, you experience...

1 star
Daily life of factory worker

2 stars
Daily life of an office worker

3 stars
Daily life of a manager

4 stars
Daily life of a CEO

5 stars
Daily life of a CEO in an MNC

6 stars
Daily life of the son of a CEO in an MNC

7 stars
Daily life of a King

8 stars
Daily life of a princess

9 stars
Daily life of a deity

10 stars
Daily life of ... Shiva?



iPhoneから送信

If religion were an escalator...

If religion were an escalator...

Some people will insist that you must stand on the left.

And others who think you should stand on the right will quarrel for all eternity with you.

But basically both believe that if you don't get one the escalator you will never get there.

Then there are those who take the elevator and they quarrel about whether you should stand at the sides of the lift instead.

And there are those who don't give a damn which side you're standing on.

And those who are strict on following whoever is in front of you, whether left or right.

And there are those who will stand right in the middle, and those who stand exactly out of line.

In some cultures there are protocols where you should stand - your personal belief is irrelevant.

But no matter what your belief, everybody takes the stairs when the escalator is getting serviced.


iPhoneから送信

A study on the provability of life after death

I'm not an expert, but is it possible for a study along the lines of the following pseudo-paper prove whether or not life after death exists in a meaningful way?

Abstract

A study on the provability of life after death

Introduction

1. We are born into this world without memory of what was before life, and we do not spend our time lamenting about what we might have done before life as we know it started.

2. If life after death exists, and any memory of life before death does not survive death, life after death would be the same as life before death - ie, we would not spend time lamenting about what life before death might have been like, but rather just go on with whatever existence that may exist.

3. As such, if a soul that survives death exists, the existence of memory would be pivotal to whether we need to be concerned about life after death.

Nomenclature

4. By "memory" I mean all reference points that the soul may use to identify itself, toward the result of formulating what the self is. For most practical means, I construe this to be synonymous to the ability to remember, but do not at this stage want to preclude the possibility of there existing elements that contribute to the concept of self-identity outside the bounds of this ability.

5. By "soul" I mean a consciousness that is able to separate itself from other consciousnesses  beyond death.

6. For the soul to exist in a way that is meaningful to our current existence, either memory must exist, or something else that is able to pin-point our current existence must exist. Let me call this "Identity". To limit the scope of this study, the consideration of complex memories and complex Identities shall be omitted. That is to say, the concept of Identities and memories that merge or otherwise get transformed after death, shall at this stage be assumed not to exist.

7. By "surviving death", I refer to the immediate retainment of memory after an individual's death, as opposed to there being an instantaneous process of off-loading one's memory into another realm after death. If the latter were true, it would be possible to destroy a soul through the instantaneous destruction of the body, unless the nature of our existence prohibits such a process because of limitations in how we are able to access the mechanics of time.

Hypothesis

8. Therefore, I hypothesize that to prove that for life after death to exist in a meaningful way, we have two basis to prove: (1) whether or not memory survives death, and, (2) whether or not Identity can exist outside the flesh.

Methods

9. If memory can survive death, it should be possible to formulate a technique to transplant memory. And since we are interested in the immediate retainment of memory after death, there must exist a location to which memory continually being off-loaded to when one is living. Quantum entanglement is one possible method, but there may be other methods not yet discovered.

10. If Identity can exist outside the flesh, cross-transplating whole organs, including the brain, or portions of organs between two individuals could be done to verify if there is any correlation between Identity and the physical body.

NOTES

1. All religions just assume that the self/soul exists, and builds theories around that to reinforce that believe. Why don't religions explain more about whether the self/soul exists, since that is the basis on which all life-after-death theories stand?For me, I draw a line between the "meaningful" and "de-facto" self. Maybe the examples below sound childish but...
[de-facto self]
If we recycle a magazine into a toilet paper, it's still the same paper, but what the paper used to be would not be relevant to the toilet paper, since what the magazine was like is irrelevant to the toilet paper. In this case, the self may exist (same pulp that made the paper), but I wouldn't care about it since there's nothing I can do about it.
[meaningful self]
But if we recycle a magazine into a child's art project, it would mean a lot, because the child would use the magazine because of its colors and pictures. In this case, the nature of the magazine is brought into its after-life as an art project. If it's possible for science to establish anything about life after death, this would be the once that is worth studying....

    Hey I'm now working with quite a few japanese and wanted to check back with you on their culture. Would it be true to say that trust is hardwon with Japanese, more so than other countries? I'm finding myself acting as a bridge between my japanese and American colleagues - they can't understand each other. Would you also agree that the Japanese mindset to solve a problem is to consider all the situation in entirety, before they will commit to a solution, rather than to move forward with part of the information? My american colleague is trying to understand why a japanese colleague seems unwilling to trust that we will make the best decision, and wants all the information to be laid out as well

    Trust takes a long time to build and Japanese base the game on mutual trust rather than clearly spelt out rules. Decisions are made by spending lengthy amounts of time through long meetings in which people communicate their total sum of feelings rather than personal opinions.

    Once trust is established, people move on without questioning minor details, but that can sometimes result in unclear objectives with which results can e measured against.

    Americans think in layers, Chinese think in units, Japanese think in clutters.

    Americans can for eg just consider the design side or just the environmental side of things

    Japanese think as far as their personal abilities allow them to

    Get your American colleagues to drink with your Japanese colleagues.

    It helps build an impression of mutual trust.

    Americans build know-how into formal systems, Japanese build it into the company culture. Get your american colleagues to communicate their passion not just their proposal.

    For Americans, a solution is as good as its possibilities, for Japanese a solution is only as good as its implementation.

    Quite enlightening. No wonder Japanese make such good designers but not so good innovators.

Breathe

Words are the poets desperate struggle to hold on to the moment that held him like a wild flower to the face of a cliff.

The four stages of freedom

The four stages of freedom

Ignorance, Knowledge, Control, Release. Ignorance, because you don't know what freedom is. Knowledge, because you can change what your have pinpointed to be binding you. Control, because you have learnt how to make the rules work for you. Release, because the captivity doesn't matter anymore.

The four stages of freedom

Ignorance, Knowledge, Control, Release. Ignorance, because you don't know what freedom is. Knowledge, because you can change what your have pinpointed to be binding you. Control, because you have learnt how to make the rules work for you. Release, because the captivity doesn't matter anymore.

CVEH1001

Human Vulnerability Advisory CVEH1001 memory injection displacing pointers to statistically significant events.

Learning

Learning unleashes your potential. Public schooling constraints it into a certain mould that fits the society that funds it.

Inclusion

Can you be inclusive without being exclusive, and still run on the same resources? Where's the line between prioritization, privilege, and discrimination? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - what if you're a worm trying to deal with the bird in the hand?

One World

One World

Even if the people stand together, countries as single entities will always stand divided, not because of religion or beliefs or political thought, but because of conflict of interests, which they disguise under various skins. The idea of the world standing together as one can only happen when all nations manage to perceive a common and serious threat. I'm not saying that this threat is china.

The problem with science

The problem with science is that whatever it has no tools to formulate a hypothesis that it can attempt to prove or disprove, it labels it "unscientific". Can we all that anything other than arrogance?

If you want discipline,
Keep record of only the wrongs
And folklore will follow.

If you want technique,
Keep record of both rights and wrongs
And knowledge will follow.

If you want courage,
Keep record of only the rights
And hope will follow.

Subjects that should be taught in a global curriculum:

1 Arithmetic and statistics

2 Computer Programming and human resource Management

3 Physics and Geometry

4 Law and politics

5 sociology and religion

6 mother tongue

7 second language

8 standardized world history

There was a time when being able to speak and write flawless English, or Chinese, or Japanese, or whatever language, was the highest skill one needed to prove one's abilities to be ensured a high social standing and a comfortable income. In those days, it made sense for society to reinforce to value of language, and for the individual to invest much time an energy into memorizing the nitty gritty details of the rules of language as set out be the elites. But let's face it. Those days are over.

Perhaps the most dangerous idea that human beings invented, is that of opposites - that opposites are identical to negations.

Four there will always be: the governor, the architect, the merchant, and the citizen.

Aka the politician, the engineer, the businessman, and the voter. T

Aka the negotiators, the dreamers, the witty, and the innocent.

Aka the scheming, the fools, the liars, and the stupid.