Free Will vs. Fate. A couple problems i run into when i'm trying to figure this one out -- first, it's easy to get into clever verbal one-liner solutions that aren't meaningful, like "I think you have the free will to determine your fate" - what the hell does that really mean, and even if you figure that out, what does it add to the debate? I use this example because I think I said it once in a college discussion class, and felt then like I'd made a very sound point. c'est la me...
second, and more importantly, you run into problem eventually where you can't find the entry point for freedom of choice. sure i can move my arm like this, in some woohoo! unexpected direction, but where exactly did that exertion of free will express itself in the physics of all of the interactions that made it happen? I mean, I felt the exertion of will, but I don't believe that my will did everything - some of the processes (e.g. muscle contraction) seem to happen as a result of the exertion of will, not as an active/ongoing part of the exertion of will. I couldn't will my muscles to contract without triggering the neurons between my brain and my arm (as far as I know).
So that second problem is the meat of the issue. Something i thought of this morning was the idea of free will within boundaries - probably not a new concept, but with the (plausible to me) addition of this - those boundaries are eigenvalues of the current state of your body at any given moment. You are free to make any choice that you can imagine, but your imagination is limited to a specific group of possibilities for any situation.
This flows nicely with the 'consciousness is an emergent property' theory - we're made up of many smaller systems, stacked down to whatever level of granularity physics has comfortably theorized. The most successful theories on the smallest known systems are within the realm of quantum mechanics, which, among other things, postulates that these small systems have a distinct set of options for any situation in which they are forced to make a choice of some sort (and that choice has measurable effect). Those choices are the eigenvalues of a function representing the choice/measurement. If you assume that for each choice we make, that choice is a biological --> chemical --> physical process, then that process would include the 'uncertainty within a given range of choices' behavior, which may translate to a sense of free will on the macroscopic level.
Physics has already demonstrated to my satisfaction that it's possible to have a system that obeys these rules containing uncertainty, yet still get the 'classical-physics' predictability that we see on the macroscopic level and our intuition tells us must be a part of any accurate model of the world.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
question for barak
you're a good person. you seem to be on the verge of landing in the center of the political melee in a time when pressure is incredibly high to succeed at everything you set your hand to. what can we as citizens do or not do to help you avoid the moral cynicism that seems to seep into the hearts of so many politicians, understanding that we are partially to blame for pushing them in that direction?
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
what have you won?
I spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out what's worth knowing. what's worth aiming at, from a life perspective. obviously there are many short-term goals that are clear and attainable, but the critics disagree on what makes sense for longer-term (lifelong) goals. religious salvation is a common one, but this highlights one of the first criteria that i personally have for what constitutes a 'good' lifelong goal - it needs to be attainable, and to be attainable, you need to be able to *see* it succeed. salvation after death is an honorable and worthy goal, but it doesn't fit the bill for me as the primary goal of one's life, because you won't know if it worked until after you're dead, in the best case scenario.
another criteria is that it needs to be a wide-impact goal. i used to wonder if the goal of life was to attain nirvana (I guess i'm working my way through the religions here). it is attainable, and you can see yourself succeed at it without having to go through the one-way door of death (although some might argue that what you consider 'yourself' is dead prior to attaining nirvana). my biggest reason for shying away from it as The Goal is that it's too personal - if i succeed at finding enlightenment, and i'm somehow still an enlightened drop in the bucket of assholes, that doesn't seem particularly useful to the world i care about. note - people aren't all assholes, i'm not *that* cynical or self-debasing - i just mean that punching a pinhole of brightness in a world that contains so many dark thoughts doesn't feel like the level of success i'm after. if i was Buddha, and could look back to see the far-reaching impact that my enlightenment and subsequent teachings had made on the world, then i might approach the level of satisfaction i'm going for. the reincarnations of Buddha found since then have had an arguably less widespread impact on the world.
it does lead my next criteria though - it must appeal to my impatience. we humans have short lives (relative to how long we'd *like* to live). i believe that sometimes great ideas need centuries to ferment and take hold - even the ideas of Jesus Christ didn't (AFAIK) gain global attention until many years after his death. i want to get some of the pleasure of seeing the success fly around the block a few times before i kick it.
the last criteria - it must be a "good" goal. this is a pretty nebulous concept. i mean 'good' in the sense of improving the world, and/or the quality of life and thought for the people in it. making people happier. making the world safer, more peaceful. helping the world to be in better harmony with itself from an environmental perspective. i completely believe in the concept of Tao. for all things, there is a name, a limited understanding of that thing, that's tossed around as the representation of it by those that refer to it, and that limited representation becomes all people know of the thing, while the reality, the *essence* of that thing remains quietly intact. people forget that the reality of the object or idea is separate from the way we paint it in our mind. that reality is the 'Tao' of the thing in question. this might be totally off-base (i guess it's difficult to discuss the Tao of Tao without making an ass of myself), and i welcome corrections/comments, but this is my understanding of the idea. so, based on that, my meaning is the Tao of 'goodness' should be contained in the goal. i've even thought that a valid life goal could be the pursuit of understanding what Goodness actually is - people have so many conflicting things that they genuinely feel to be 'good', and a thorough understanding of goodness in current thought would allow these conflicts to be moderated with a better feel for the goodness within the opposing views versus the dishonorable sentiments within those views.
another criteria is that it needs to be a wide-impact goal. i used to wonder if the goal of life was to attain nirvana (I guess i'm working my way through the religions here). it is attainable, and you can see yourself succeed at it without having to go through the one-way door of death (although some might argue that what you consider 'yourself' is dead prior to attaining nirvana). my biggest reason for shying away from it as The Goal is that it's too personal - if i succeed at finding enlightenment, and i'm somehow still an enlightened drop in the bucket of assholes, that doesn't seem particularly useful to the world i care about. note - people aren't all assholes, i'm not *that* cynical or self-debasing - i just mean that punching a pinhole of brightness in a world that contains so many dark thoughts doesn't feel like the level of success i'm after. if i was Buddha, and could look back to see the far-reaching impact that my enlightenment and subsequent teachings had made on the world, then i might approach the level of satisfaction i'm going for. the reincarnations of Buddha found since then have had an arguably less widespread impact on the world.
it does lead my next criteria though - it must appeal to my impatience. we humans have short lives (relative to how long we'd *like* to live). i believe that sometimes great ideas need centuries to ferment and take hold - even the ideas of Jesus Christ didn't (AFAIK) gain global attention until many years after his death. i want to get some of the pleasure of seeing the success fly around the block a few times before i kick it.
the last criteria - it must be a "good" goal. this is a pretty nebulous concept. i mean 'good' in the sense of improving the world, and/or the quality of life and thought for the people in it. making people happier. making the world safer, more peaceful. helping the world to be in better harmony with itself from an environmental perspective. i completely believe in the concept of Tao. for all things, there is a name, a limited understanding of that thing, that's tossed around as the representation of it by those that refer to it, and that limited representation becomes all people know of the thing, while the reality, the *essence* of that thing remains quietly intact. people forget that the reality of the object or idea is separate from the way we paint it in our mind. that reality is the 'Tao' of the thing in question. this might be totally off-base (i guess it's difficult to discuss the Tao of Tao without making an ass of myself), and i welcome corrections/comments, but this is my understanding of the idea. so, based on that, my meaning is the Tao of 'goodness' should be contained in the goal. i've even thought that a valid life goal could be the pursuit of understanding what Goodness actually is - people have so many conflicting things that they genuinely feel to be 'good', and a thorough understanding of goodness in current thought would allow these conflicts to be moderated with a better feel for the goodness within the opposing views versus the dishonorable sentiments within those views.
Friday, September 26, 2008
McCain is a bull
there's a difference in these candidates' approaches - one provides detail, listens to his opponent, acknowledges similarities and differences. the other is a bull. u-pick.
Jim Lehrer
is not a good moderator. he wants to put the candidates in a jar and shake it, see if they'll fight.
McCain debate foolishness
a crisis shows what a person is made of. McCain would like to claim that he is made of tough stuff, based on his survival of the POW experience. this is an opportunity for him to demonstrate that he still has the capability of being calm and steadfast under pressure, and that he remains capable of making thoughtful, well-balanced decisions to resolve the crisis. both candidates should be ON THE RECORD about how they want to deal with the crisis, before they have an opportunity to start using 20/20 hindsight to say what they *would* have done.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Message to the world
please forgive us. the size of our country tends to blend the stupidity of our vocal majorities across the faces of those of us who are less reactionary and more moderate/considered in our views.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
I'm a Rambler (part N of M)
quick thought on the philosophical front -
What questions are worth asking? One of the biggest problems when looking for information is in knowing how to frame your question properly - when I talk about it being likely (IMO) that the answer to most philosophical deep / base-level questions is found and forgotten frequently, I'm talking about exactly the same type of issue you find when you go to Google looking for the answer to something you know very little about: you have to spend *some* time searching ineffeciently just casting a wide net, learning the terms of the trade, so you can narrow your search down to the stuff you're really interested in. until you've narrowed your search, you probably see the exact answer you need several times without being aware of it, because it's significance isn't apparent until you see what's noise and what contains that nugget of useful information you're looking for. and "useful" exactly equals "what you're looking for" - information isn't intrinsically useful or not useful without a purpose to be evaluated against. IMO.
example: my wife cut her finger and got raw pork in it one day. the search trail first started with generic terms like "raw pork infection", and ended up with searches for "septicemia" and "yersinosis", to get very targeted articles on the medical implications of this cut. in my analogy, philosophical questions about human nature and the nature of the world are like searches on a database of immense size, and the volume of search results is so huge that getting to the really choice keywords is not feasible. in google searching, it's obvious what keywords are relatively rare and targeted, just by looking at the first 10-50 results. in human thought and observation of the world around us, factoids and plausible theories are so plentiful that even the statistical tail end of the uniqueness curve is actually a huge number, so with our scarce amount of time available, we can't absorb enough information to clearly say "yeah, that train of thought is static, and that other trail has the good stuff". I know this isn't exactly clear, but i guess i'm trying to elucidate one of those scalability issues that enters the picture when inspecting thought and existence.
to be continued.
What questions are worth asking? One of the biggest problems when looking for information is in knowing how to frame your question properly - when I talk about it being likely (IMO) that the answer to most philosophical deep / base-level questions is found and forgotten frequently, I'm talking about exactly the same type of issue you find when you go to Google looking for the answer to something you know very little about: you have to spend *some* time searching ineffeciently just casting a wide net, learning the terms of the trade, so you can narrow your search down to the stuff you're really interested in. until you've narrowed your search, you probably see the exact answer you need several times without being aware of it, because it's significance isn't apparent until you see what's noise and what contains that nugget of useful information you're looking for. and "useful" exactly equals "what you're looking for" - information isn't intrinsically useful or not useful without a purpose to be evaluated against. IMO.
example: my wife cut her finger and got raw pork in it one day. the search trail first started with generic terms like "raw pork infection", and ended up with searches for "septicemia" and "yersinosis", to get very targeted articles on the medical implications of this cut. in my analogy, philosophical questions about human nature and the nature of the world are like searches on a database of immense size, and the volume of search results is so huge that getting to the really choice keywords is not feasible. in google searching, it's obvious what keywords are relatively rare and targeted, just by looking at the first 10-50 results. in human thought and observation of the world around us, factoids and plausible theories are so plentiful that even the statistical tail end of the uniqueness curve is actually a huge number, so with our scarce amount of time available, we can't absorb enough information to clearly say "yeah, that train of thought is static, and that other trail has the good stuff". I know this isn't exactly clear, but i guess i'm trying to elucidate one of those scalability issues that enters the picture when inspecting thought and existence.
to be continued.
Friday, April 18, 2008
To ABC:
don't block our nation's chance to focus on significant issues. our nation has become more and more led by bullshit politicians, and it's due in large part to the resonance between their tendencies towards meaningless gestures or sound bytes, and the media's appetite for rewarding such stupidity with airtime and sensationalism. you lower yourself when you participate in this cycle, and you encourage fools to run our country, which means that the american public would be fools to support you by watching your programming.
Pickin' Em Up and Layin' Em Down
On to the next dedicated hosting provider. Most recent failure: netrack servers (www.netrackservers.com). Looks good, but in the three months I've been with them, I've seen at least one QOS issue per week (e.g. we just had a 3-hour period of time during which there was packet loss rate of between 40% and 60%). I was tempted to blame it on Level3, but tracert implied otherwise - solid responses all the way up to netrack's doorstep.
The fun thing is that their tech support number drops straight into a voicemail box. I have never spoken with a human being at their company, and they strongly encourage you to use their support website (https://support.netrackservers.com), which is of course on the same network as their dedicated servers, so if you have a network outage of some level, your ability to access the support site is compromised as well. neat how that works - sure keeps the customers off your back during a crisis. Today, i called into their tech support number, and was informed that their mailbox was full. Hah.
BAD, BAD, BAD Netrack Servers!! Stop pooping on the carpet!!
Moving on... Next stop: GoDaddy.com, Amazon's cloud computing, Google's cloud computing, and Rackspace (once my $3mm trust fund kicks in, or i win the lottery)
The fun thing is that their tech support number drops straight into a voicemail box. I have never spoken with a human being at their company, and they strongly encourage you to use their support website (https://support.netrackservers.com), which is of course on the same network as their dedicated servers, so if you have a network outage of some level, your ability to access the support site is compromised as well. neat how that works - sure keeps the customers off your back during a crisis. Today, i called into their tech support number, and was informed that their mailbox was full. Hah.
BAD, BAD, BAD Netrack Servers!! Stop pooping on the carpet!!
Moving on... Next stop: GoDaddy.com, Amazon's cloud computing, Google's cloud computing, and Rackspace (once my $3mm trust fund kicks in, or i win the lottery)
Thursday, April 17, 2008
O Hillary, My Hillary
I'm from New York. I used to be one of those people that thought "why are people so negative about Hillary Clinton? There's nothing particularly unique about her, she's done some good things, she's done some bad things, what's the big deal??"
I've learned an answer to that question. She's a phony. She presents herself as a force for change in a government dominated by men. She presents herself as a skilled and thoughtful leader. She presents herself as "just one of us, trying to make it". She presents herself as being a democrat.
Fortunately, her acting skills are crappy when she's bent by the frustration of being thwarted on the yellow brick road to the white house. She thought she was a shoe-in for the job.
I'm pretty sure that in truth, she's a Good Ol' Boy Republican. She's got a good makeup team.
There's room for more than one at the "call me naive, but the political machine is fucked up and I want to fix it" table. She's too jaded to go there; she fully embraces the tricks of the trade that she's learned over the past two decades, from spin to smear to diversions.
That is, of course, why I will not vote for her ever again, in any race.
I've learned an answer to that question. She's a phony. She presents herself as a force for change in a government dominated by men. She presents herself as a skilled and thoughtful leader. She presents herself as "just one of us, trying to make it". She presents herself as being a democrat.
Fortunately, her acting skills are crappy when she's bent by the frustration of being thwarted on the yellow brick road to the white house. She thought she was a shoe-in for the job.
I'm pretty sure that in truth, she's a Good Ol' Boy Republican. She's got a good makeup team.
There's room for more than one at the "call me naive, but the political machine is fucked up and I want to fix it" table. She's too jaded to go there; she fully embraces the tricks of the trade that she's learned over the past two decades, from spin to smear to diversions.
That is, of course, why I will not vote for her ever again, in any race.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
I Question Their Dedication
Dedicated hosting is, in theory, a nice way for the little guy to pay a monthly chunk, and get access to enterprise-level hosting facilities, hardware support, and bandwidth. In practice, it's just another one of those industry broken promises fueled by cut-throat competition and the constant downward slide of customer service and service quality that typically comes along with aggressive price undercutting.
I can't find a reference to the first hosting provider that suffered from this, but it was some company in Canada that was offering 3000GB of bandwidth, reasonable hardware specs for the time, for $70/month. Network goes down, nobody can be reached. Seeya.
AIT - my most frustrating experience, even though i stuck with them for nearly four years hoping that the stability of the service would be good enough that i didn't have to *deal* with their crappy tech support / customer service department. dumb of me (although i make many decisions that could be considered dumb, simply on the basis of not having enough time to take the proper course of action). it seems that my loyalty/apathy had its own special reward (this is very much like The Brick Joke & The Cigar Joke)
Act 1: Josh Takes Command
Downtime: 9 hrs
Information Ticket # : [ 643467 ]
Callback Settings No callback currently set. Domain : ___.com Email : james@___.com Phone : 000-0000 Date received : 12/5/2007 1:57:43 PM Status : Closed Action : Click here to reopen Ticket
Sequence : 1 Request on :12/5/2007 1:57:43 PM Topic : Dedicated Support
the ip address 216.117.148.140 has been assigned to me for over two years. today, i'm finding that suddenly when i browse to this ip address, i get a web page from some one else's server, instead of my client's website on my server. i have confirmed that my web server is up, working properly, that all dns entries are correct and the domain is in good standing with the internet registrar. this seems to be a routing issue within your network.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown
Customer Comment :
i spoke with a first level tech, who asked me to clarify the problem in my ticket comments:
the ip address 216.117.148.140, which has been assigned to me for over two years, is now routing to some server other than mine.
for your reference, here are all of the ip addresses assigned to my account:
216.117.147.190
216.117.185.123
216.117.173.233
216.117.164.13
216.117.148.140
216.117.148.83
216.117.145.214
216.117.137.78
--
the contact that i spoke to asked me about the web site i had running at that ip address, and looked into the whois for the account, etc. these pieces of information only confuse a very simple issue - this ip address [216.117.148.140] is assigned to me, and the traffic to that address is not reaching my server.
Submitted on :12/5/2007 4:03:45 PM
Reply Sent on : 12/5/2007 6:38:48 PM By : Joshua Walton
Hello, I have looked into your issue and verified that these IP's are assigned to you and are no longer dually assigned. We have taken action against the customer who stole your IP.
216.117.148.140
216.117.147.190
216.117.185.123
216.117.173.233
216.117.164.13
216.117.148.140
216.117.148.83
216.117.145.214
216.117.137.78
Should you have any more issues, please contact our customer service. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for hosting with us.
Joshua Walton
System Administrator
AIT, Inc.
Sequence : 2 Request on :1/19/2008 3:19:40 PM Topic : Fixed Contact Customer
i now appear to be having the exact same problem with the following IP addresses:
216.117.137.78
216.117.148.83
216.117.145.214
, all of which are assigned to me, confirmed per previous comments on this ticket. please confirm that they are still routed to my server, and that they are not assigned to any other server.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown
Reply Sent on : 1/19/2008 10:10:34 PM By : Philip Eatherington
Hello, and thank you for contacting AIT.
Per my conversation with James, the three IPs are all now working correctly. The last, 216.117.145.214 had some more difficulty because Windows detected a conflict and dropped the IP. These had all been assigned to newly provisioned customers because an internal system was not completely up to date.
I have ensured these IPs are correctly marked as assigned to you so this should not occur again and have migrated the other customers to different IP address, which were initially going to be provided for your use. This was done because all three sites for the fully managed customers were still resolving to the default page, and were only a few days to a week old, indicating they were not yet underway. Should a future conflict occur, I cannot guarantee such a favorable outcome.
I have personally checked each IP in the list Joshua sent to you in the last iteration to ensure that these are properly assigned to you and should not be reassigned.
--------------------------
Act 2: Josh Giveth and Josh Taketh Away
Information Ticket # : [ 654365 ]
Callback Settings No callback currently set. Domain : ____.com Email : james@____.com Phone : 000-0000 Date received : 1/14/2008 10:17:51 AM Status : Closed Action : Click here to reopen Ticket
Sequence : 1 Request on :1/14/2008 10:17:51 AM Topic : Abuse notice
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown
Customer Comment :
I"ve been told by the last AIT tech that i spoke with, that we"re somehow under suspicion of stealing ip addresses. every ip address associated with our dedicated server has been assigned to us for OVER TWO YEARS, and i have the messages to prove it from your tech support.
please substantiate this claim immediately or restore our hardware to service.
Submitted on :1/14/2008 8:15:19 PM
Reply Sent on : 1/17/2008 9:54:46 AM By : Alton Hurley
Closed ticket without sending reply.
Information Ticket # : [ 654442 ]
Callback Settings Callback Time : 1/14/2008 1:35:00 PM Phone Number : NNN-PPP-XXXX [ Close Callback ] Domain : ____.com Email : james@____.com Phone : 000-0000 Date received : 1/14/2008 1:31:44 PM Status : Closed Action : Click here to reopen Ticket
Sequence : 1 Request on :1/14/2008 1:31:44 PM Topic : PTS
Server is down. Immediate reboot is needed, as client websites and email are down. This is a PTS immediate response needed - NOT a non-pts reboot issue. Please reboot asap.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown
Customer Comment :
nearly 2 hours after it was determined that the reason for shutting our server down was invalid, it remains down.
Submitted on :1/14/2008 11:03:25 PM
Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 4:47:22 PM By : Mark Greene
Thank you for hosting with AIT. Our system administrators have a ticket regarding this issue in their tier and will have your services backup shortly. We appreciates your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
Sequence : 2 Request on :1/14/2008 5:32:51 PM Topic : PTS
This PTS ticket was improperly closed as it was NOT rectified. Please reopen. If you must consolidate tickets, close the original ticket from 10:17am, NOT this PTS ticket until the situation is fixed.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown
Update Sent on : 1/14/2008 5:44:30 PM By : Mark Greene
Thank you for hosting with AIT. Our system administrators have a ticket regarding this issue in their tier and will have your services backup shortly. We appreciates your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 6:20:40 PM By : Alton Hurley
Closed ticket without sending reply.
Sequence : 3 Request on :1/14/2008 8:16:32 PM Topic : PTS
this issue has not been resolved, our server is still down, and we did not receive a call from tech support confirming that this ticket should be closed.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown
Customer Comment :
our server appears to be up and functioning properly. i"m able to connect to a remote desktop, and am confirming that it is intact.
Submitted on :1/14/2008 11:26:13 PM
Update Sent on : 1/14/2008 9:09:42 PM By : Mark Greene
Thank you for hosting with AIT. As per our conversation, your server modeic.com had been taken offline because it was believed that the IP address 216.117.147.190 was in use on the server but was not allocated to you. However ticket number 643467 indicates that the IP address was in fact assigned to your account.
I have sent this information to our system administrators as well as to our Abuse manager. I apologize for the confusion and your services will be restored shortly. Thank you for your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
Mark Greene
Technical Support Supervisor
AIT Inc.
Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 11:34:06 PM By : Mark Greene
Thank you for hosting with AIT. As per our conversation, your service has been restored and all services are responding normally. Thank you for your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
Downtime: 20.5 hours
Compensation offered: $37.50 (1/2 month hosting cost)
The Brick: The system admin responsible for shutting our server down at 3am with no notice at all was Joshua Walton, the one that said "We have taken action against the customer who stole your IP."
None of these cost-competetive providers gives a shit about the SMB impact of their crappy customer service and the downtime associated with their unresponsive staff. Their goal is to get your $$ for as little effort as they can put out, which translates to "get you off the phone" style phone banks. This one event cost our little business over $10K in lost business, but the most we can do about it is blog about it and hope to warn the next guy. Then get ready to hand over our wallets to rackspace, for the privilege of having someone actually be responsive when their network and server hardware fucks up.
I would say 'peace out', but...
war.
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