Tuesday 2 July 2013

Things change and so they should.

They say happiness is learning to love what's in front of you. Perhaps I'm a fool, but I have a feeling that is something a quitter would say. Like giving up, I don't like the taste of that. I'd rather fight until the bitter end than accept a mundane existence.


We all have goals, some people just settle for less and some people never reach their goals. The point is to be able to choose what is in front of you and to make it something great. What is worth it and what is noble is a matter of opinion. Personally I'm not afraid of what people think of me, that is irrelevant. What I might be afraid of though, is that I might never get what I want. And yet to pretend that I don't want it, would be self-deception.

I'm an introvert and I don't see why I would want to be anything other than what I am. If I don't like certain activities which are normally considered extroverted, I'd prefer other people to change instead of me so that I could have fun my way. It's not like I hate all the people, I'm just saddened, bored and sometimes annoyed by people who don't love the things I do and that they love the things that I hate, if nothing else, it makes me a bit lonely.

--

Learning refers to the process of observation and the statistical significance of that observation. Learned information doesn't have to be true and most often it is not, since learned information is most of the time only an approximation of the reality or a single narrow view of it, it can also be completely false. Learning only implies a gain of some new knowledge regardless if it is true of false.

--


Luckily when it comes down to it, that fortune is a fallacy. Understanding does not imply a perfect model. It implies a model which approximates the behavior of the whole to fair extent and converges if expanded. We can understand what makes the brain "tick" even if we cannot grasp the entire complexity of the system. Of course no system with finite information content can ever perfectly understand another system with larger information content, but that's not what things are all about. It's like a jpg-picture, a lossy compressor. We can still approach perfection even if we'll never quite reach it.

They: The quote did not imply the understanding of a simplified or approximate model of the brain...so yes, understanding in this case does mean understanding the truth of it or of a perfect model if you will.

I disagree. Natural language contains that implication by default unless otherwise mentioned. It should be obvious from the way natural language is used in everyday life. I would even argue that nothing at all is and never will be understood absolutely perfectly. Absolute knowledge beyond things like "I think therefore I am" is impossible. They aren't by nature similar to understanding of observable things. I find it strange that anyone would even think absolutely perfect model is something which makes any coherent sense whatsoever in this sort of context.


--

This is just an example of how natural language is vague, there is nothing particularly interesting about it. There are different categories to which irrelevant can refer to. The idea of god is irrelevant to the fundamental understanding of the universe even if it is not irrelevant to the understanding of human history and sociological aspects of the peoples faith to such a construct. The term god can be a placeholder or a name for peoples behavioral characteristics, faith etc. however as a name to a natural phenomenon it is totally irrelevant since it doesn't have any connection whatsoever to anything observable or identifiable neither directly or indirectly.


It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.



But in the end... there are no genuine philosophical problems.

"The main point is the theory of what can be expressed by propositions - i.e. by language - (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what can not be expressed by propositions, but only shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy."

http://researchinprogress.tumblr.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

No comments:

Post a Comment