Looks like a got my twitter back! Didn’t get an email or anything from twitter support, but suspended notices aren’t popping up anymore and everything looks back to normal. It looks like my account had been compromised somehow. I’ll be searching around for how that could have happened. But the link to my website had been changed to something spammy, which I’m betting is why my account was suspended. Glad I got it back, but it looks like I lost all my followers and everyone I was following, so that will take some time to rebuild. Hope it won’t happen again.
Philosophy Strong AI
The universality of superior intelligence
I’ve heard it theorized that if we ever contact sentient intelligent aliens from other planets, we may have no way to relate to them because their methods of thinking will be too outlandish for us. They will think in fundamentally different ways.
Nonsense, I say! While there may be some variations on thought processing speed, memory, and perceptions (being able to hear different sound frequencies, for instance, or having a stronger sense of smell, or perhaps being able to sense infrared light, though I’m not sure what good that would do), I theorize the foundations of intelligence are like the laws of physics or mathematics; they are universal. Nature always hones in on the same principles.
In this way, I believe humans are the most intelligent possible beings in the universe. If something cannot be understood by a human, then it cannot be understood by any physical being at all. There may be aliens just as intelligent as humans, but there can be no aliens with “superior” intelligence (of the “I understand things you cannot even fathom!” sort, not the “I can do math in my head faster than you!” sort), because there exist no different systems of logic that are just as valid as the system humans use, because our system is based on immutable principles ingrained in the nature of nature of itself. (I do not mean the system of logic as defined by mathematical laws in a text book; these systems are incomplete. We do not yet fully recognize the logic we use, yet we use it naturally. Its subtle simpleness and ease of use is what makes so hard to find, but we’re getting there.)
Stupid things
Twitter suspended me
I just tried tweeting something, and couldn’t. My twitter account has been suspended! (Don’t have schadenfreude!) I’m guessing they have some automated algorithmic process for suspending accounts and mine came up as a false-positive. (Too many links, maybe? I do post links a bit, but they’re never misleading or repetitive or spammy.) Either that or this is the work of my arch-nemesis, Finneas Blinn, who is envious of my intellect and success and seeks to ruin me in every way.
Fortunately, Twitter allows you to submit a ticket asking them to review and restore your account, which I of course immediately did.
We’ll see how long it takes. Googling around, seems false-positives are not uncommon, and restoration can take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. So it’s like querying agents!
Anyway, I’m not too worried. I only follow around 40 people and only have around 240 followers. I don’t have a business that relies on tweeting people or something, so waiting won’t bother me. Besides, there’s always you, WordPress, my ever faithful friend and ally.
Oh, and here’s the tweet I was trying to tweet when my account suddenly became suspended: “almost done plotting my next novel… have a summary of all the scenes, but still need to work out the specifics of connecting some of them”
Stupid things
Professor turns test into a game, blogger remains unimpressed
Here’s an interesting article a friend shared on Facebook. The article has gotten a lot of likes and tweets, and commentators on the article congratulate the author, a professor of Behavioral Ecology at UCLA, for his wonderful brilliant idea.
His idea? He let his students “cheat” on an exam by letting them work with each other and with any other resource they wanted. The “meta” idea is that they’d learn something about behavior by how they take the test.
What would they learn?
I don’t know. The article is rather vague on the specifics, save for an idea any idiot should know, “If we all work together, we can do more.” That doesn’t mean working together is automatically a good thing, obviously; it depends on what people are trying to achieve. If two or more people are trying to achieve the same thing and lose nothing by another person achieving it, then, of course, work together. I think the human species would’ve died out long ago if humans didn’t innately understand this, so I fail to see anything very amazing or brilliant by exemplifying this in allowing such cooperative behavior to emerge in a set of unconventional exam rules.
The professor writes:
In the end, the students learned what social insects like ants and termites have known for hundreds of millions of years. To win at some games, cooperation is better than competition. Unity that arises through a diversity of opinion is stronger than any solitary competitor.
But did the students themselves realize this?
Is that supposed to be profound?
What really bugs me more than anything, however, is when the professor writes:
Is the take-home message, then, that cheating is good? Well…no. Although by conventional test-taking rules, the students were cheating, they actually weren’t in this case. Instead, they were changing their goal in the Education Game from “Get a higher grade than my classmates” to “Get to the best answer.” This also required them to make new rules for test taking.
What student’s goal is merely to “get a higher grade than my classmate”? Is the value of a D worth more if everyone else got an F? I think the goal for most students is to “get the best grade I can based on how much I value it.” Because, in the end, for the purposes of the student, the true worth of a grade is decided by himself, not a professor or an institution’s arbitrary rating system.
You see, you silly professor, your test was never a “game.” At least, not in the sense you thought it was. You do not get to decide what the students are playing for, so you never had control of the rules in the first place. The students have always been in control of the rules, because they’re in control of their own goals. The rules any educator establishes for his students are part of the educator’s goals, what the educators are playing for, what the educators want to do with their student’s grades and what they want those grades to reflect.
So I fail to see how the professor accomplished anything worthwhile.
If you want to accomplish something worthwhile, follow my education philosophies!
Interesting things
Slash as a conjunction word
Here’s an interesting article about the word “slash” becoming a new modern conjunction word, as when people say the word to mean what its corresponding symbol means in writing, as in: “I think I’m going to watch TV slash take a nap.”
I have used the term myself, though not often, and I would never spell out the word in writing, such as in a blog/article. (See?) And when I say it, I prefer to physically slash the air with two fingers for gesticulatory emphasis.
Of course, we can quickly infinite loop the definition of “slash” by defining it as “and slash or” meaning “and and slash or or” meaning “and and and slash or or or” ad infinitum.
Anyway, it’s interesting to see how language evolves like this. I’m always annoyed when people say “that’s not a word” as if only some select group of humanity has the ability to decide what is and isn’t a word. There’s a fine argument to be made that just making up a word or changing a word’s definition without anyone’s consent will only hurt your chances of being understood when you try to communicate, but if the meaning is clear by the word’s context and the origins of the word’s roots, language can be completely gruptious.
Stupid things
Um, what?
Edited summary of an overheard account of a discussion:
"Is X a choice?"
"Yes."
"Then choose it."
"No."
"Aha! You see! Then X is not a choice!"
*headdesk*
Stupid things
How to easily recite a million digits of pi
Just recite a million random numbers. Pi goes on forever. The sequence you recite is bound to be in there somewhere.
Philosophy
What do you think?
Haven’t posted much in a while. Continuing to work on my novel; my progress can be read about on my writing blog. Also making some slow progress on my search for Strong AI. Anyway, he’s a post about thinking.
As humans, we don’t very often turn our brains off, save for the deeper cycles of sleep. While awake, we’re almost always thinking about something.
So what are you thinking about? The possibilities include:
1. Going over stuff that happened. Perhaps to try to make sense of it. Perhaps to guess at other people’s intentions (which may lead to delusions). Perhaps to decide what you’ll do should you find yourself in the situation again.
2. Daydreaming. Just making up scenarios for yourself, putting yourself in really awesome situations that you’d love to live through, or really awful situations in an effort to prepare for them. A form of self-comfort or self-torture.
3. Deciding what to do. What should you eat for dinner? What movie should you watch? What book should you read? Should you take a shower now or later? What should you say to that guy you need to talk to? The answer is trivial, but still requires at least some thought.
4. Observing. Or, I might say, paying attention. Perhaps watching squirrels scurry along branches, or ants build their dirt mounds. Perhaps watching TV or listening to music or reading a blog post. This may be paired with another form of thinking, but you have to dedicate some brain power to making sense of what your watching or reading or listening to if you’re truly paying attention to it.
5. Deep problem-solving. This is when you’re solving a problem you’ve never solved before and don’t plan on needing to solve again. Perhaps a particular chess position. Perhaps a mathematical conundrum. Perhaps a philosophical consideration. Perhaps a scientific query. Perhaps an algorithmic design. Coming up with a solution (or coming to understand someone else’s solution) may take weeks, months, or even years, but the solution will usually result in a paradigm shift, forever shaping how you understand something from then on.
6. Praying. More than a recitation of memorized word sequences (though it may include them), I consider this to be a profound idea. In fact, I’m not even sure how to describe it off the top of my head. At it’s foundation, it’s a form of honest self-reflection, humble thankfulness for existing, and perhaps a request for something desired (forgiveness if nothing else). What makes it profound is the idea that the prayer is being heard by an entity you neither have the capacity to fully understand nor hear in return.
7. Meditating. Purposefully trying not to think about anything, or at least much less than usual. (There may be more to it depending on who you ask; I can’t claim to be a meditation guru.)
———-
The first three or four are so easy that many spend their lives never daring to try to solve a deep problem or reflecting on the nature of spiritual things. So, the exercise is, as you’re going about you’re day, try to notice what you’re thinking about and perhaps try to think differently. If you’re spending all your time going over something or daydreaming, move on to some deep problem-solving. Try to come up with theories to explain something. If you’re spending too much time deciding what to do, try observing something. You’ll get new ideas. Obviously, try praying at some point, and thinking about the nature of God and life and eternity.
Animated shorts
A couple animated shorts…
Just a couple animated shorts I recently enjoyed:
“Strange Oaks” by Headless Productions
“The Lindy Cubes” by Josep Bernaus