Funny that

When we are so immersed in something, we forget the question of why we exist.

When people are bitching about so and so, they forget the question of why.

We never seem to be able to see things from other sides. That is the greatest failure of our kind.

With that said, I will be enjoying myself in Melbourne the next two weeks. Doubt there will be updates, so chill :D

Cheerio! (In case you are wondering, it is a catchphrase from the anime Katanagatari, or Sword Story. A catchphrase that the character misunderstood the meaning and used it repeatedly oblivious to the actual meaning. Its infectious to me.)

Power Rangers and Ultramen

When I was young, my heroes were inevitably the Power Rangers, Ultraman, Masked Riders and of course, Son Goku from Dragon Ball. Coupled with Disney, they make up an interesting part of philosophy and morality combo for when I was young, and naturally it went unnoticed.

If I think about them from my perspective now, the first few introduces the idea of good and bad. Monsters are bad, because they eat people. The heroes/heroines are good, because they protect us. Simple as that. And violence against such creatures are justified, because well, they are evil.

Disney introduces the idea that each and everyone of us are unique. It feeds our imagination, and plants the ideas that the world can be a better place if we would just love everyone more, and express it properly. In fact, if we take one step further, it subtly hints that each of us are princes and princesses in our own rights, and that we will find 'the one for us', enjoy love and bask in its sweetness and live happily forever after. Such ideals are wonderful, and I still do think so now.

But reality is strange. Everybody loves Disney stories, everybody agrees with it. But you don't see happy people dancing in the street. Reason is? I don't know but I guess people are weary and think reality is a bitch. There's work.. there's relationship problems. Love is not what was portrayed in Disney. Something I personally feel, well, nothing is complicated. We are the complicated ones, and we complicate everything. The same argument holds for physics and mathematics. Although I doubt there is an absolute truth in these, the beauty of these two subject lies in its simplicity.

Now, at the age of 21 (approaching 22), I introduce to you the 'Philosopher Rangers'. Warriors who fight against the crushing depression of human stupidity, and seek to make sense of the reality and people. My heroes, are all dead unfortunately.

Before that, I must confess I do not understand them completely yet, though I doubt there is a single soul on Earth even now who understands them 100%. You can't even understand your wife, how could you understand deep thinkers?

First up, we have Kirky (an affectionate nickname I gave him, not Kirby though).
I was listening to the radio on BBC website this morning on Kirky, and well, much of what I said about my philosophy in the previous post had actually been covered by Kirky. So much for my own originality, but I find comfort not in recognition of originality, rather I am happy that I have made the same realization as someone who heavily influenced the world of thinking with (not exactly) same ideas that I had. In fact, it was pretty much summarized in the first 20 minutes of the talkshow. Kierkegaard holds that we cannot know anything absolute, i.e. we are not entitled to God's view as mentioned in the talkshow. Reason and rationalization are not absolute, but acceptance is what constitutes faith. he rejects all manner of institutionalization of religion (namely Christianity).

However, I do not agree entirely with Kierkegaard's ideas. Not all. Definitely.

Second Hero, we have Heidi.
Heidegger was one who studied profusely into the subject of 'existence' or as he termed it, 'Being'. I admire him strongly for that, for he spent a great deal of time making sense of why we exist, why we are 'be-ing'. The field in question is none other than 'Ontology', the question of Being. Unfortunately, Heidi got entangled in the Nazi craze. Of course, why he did it is very possibly because the Nazis were partly influenced by his thoughts. And naturally they incorporated his ideas into their doctrines of German supremacy.

Heidi was deeply into language. A romantic perhaps? He believed in primordial languages, namely Greek, and that these oldest languages held 'True meanings' to words, unlike his 'present' language where words are said without meaning what they meant. Think of slangs even now, that is perhaps what he felt was the corruption of language.

And no, I do not agree entirely with Heidi either. Whatever I understand anyway.

And third, we have Can't.
Kant is the one I understand the least. The few books I read about him, explaining his ideas, employs super heavy words and super heavy languages. But nevertheless, the essence of his ideas are what attracts me. We strongly cannot know anything absolute, according to Kant. He divides the human mind into four primary faculties, namely Pure Reason, Practical Reason, Judgement and one more I forgot what. And he studies (armchair speculation, I believe) deeply into the relation between these. I don't understand much, but from what little I gleaned, Kant holds a treasure of ideas on, well, Ideas.

Because I don't understand much, I can't say I disagree with him. Partly because whatever I understood (I hope not wrongly), I agreed.

Fourth, we have Bertie.
Bertie is known for his quick wit. His major(? there are others but major to me) study is in philosphical history, epistemology, logic, and of course the main interest of him I think is NUMBERS. Numbers are so embedded into our lives we don't even realize they are there. And incidentally, numbers are logical axioms. You cannot prove them logically, and Bertie tried using mathematical sets. Can't remember if he succeeded (I think he did, I didn't bother understanding the logics, its taxing on the brain). While Newton wrote Philosophie Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Bertie wrote 'Principia Mathematica'. And one book I am keen on reading by Bertie is 'The History of Western Philosophy bla bla bla politics'.

One famous (I think it was improptu) answer Bertie gave, when during a lecture (I think), some guy questioned him as 'If what you are saying is true, then 1+1=3 and you are the Pope should be equivalent!'. The answer came:

"If 1+1 = 3, then we have 2=3. Subtract 1 from each side, we now have 1=2. The Pope and I are two people, therefore we are 1."

And a lovely quote by Bertie goes "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the smart are always full of doubts".

Moving on, we have Leibby. The antihero of Isaac Newton.

Leibniz invented calculus independently of Isaac Newton. And the two are bitter rivals, so I understand. Newton was famous for being a taciturn character, some described as 'arrogant' etc. and I read somewhere that some professor thinks he has some form of autism. But the subject is on Leibniz. Leibniz, unlike Newton, sought to socialize a lot. With powerful figures, namely princesses and the like.

The work by Leibniz that I find intriguing is his work on 'monads'. In it, he tries to form a model to explain reality, and matter. The general idea is that the universe is made up of infinite 'monads', little round stuff that floats around throughtout the entire universe. And these monads are infinitesimally small, and he described them as 'beings in harmony with each and all others. All information of every single monad is known by every other single monad, and any change in one is immediately conveyed to every other one of them' is what I remember.

And currently, Physicists are spooked by electron entanglement, where information is transferred faster than the speed of light. Quantum mechancis comes in, but I shall not delve into a subject I am not too confident of yet. Suffice to say, electronic entanglement is currently being researched as a means of teleporting information, according to Michio Kaku.


That's 5 philosophers that I strongly admire. Nonetheless, Socrates deserves an honorary mention, for he was the Father of Philosophy. The very first human being who sought to employ reasoning and rationality to tell people they are stupid. And we know that Socrates didn't like writing, and frequently sought conversations with people and asking simple questions that make people admit they are stupid and didn't know (but thought they did).

Plato too, is a hero by his own rights. His world of Ideas, now coupled with Kant can make your supposed knowledge or wisdom turn to dust if you concede to their arguments.

Edit : How could I forget George Carlin? Goodness me.

Oh and in case you're wondering, no I do not get all (or for now, any) sources from wikipedia. I am reading real life physical books.

Fun Fact : In case you didn't know it, 'Science' and 'Scientists' didn't come about until people like Galileo, Hegel and Descartes (Pronounced as Dey-kah I think) established it. Hegel (Kirky does not like Hegel) believed in totality, an organized rationality that explains stuff in all subjects. Formally though, Descartes is the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and Galileo the "Father of Science". The basis of science is one of 'Cause-and-Effect', but that is steadily being dismantled currently (by quantum physics, and some logics).

Opinion : Of course, science works so well its uncanny. Applying the principles of similitude (studying something specifically in labs by simulations/experiments and then applying the results in real projects) currently is what drives our world of economy and science now. But, the wry side of it is that scientists are observers, and currently it is realized that the observers unknowingly change what is being observed. Quantum mechanics again. But, on a more common-sensical well, sense, below is a pretty cute logical flaw in experiments that captures the idea of 'you measure only what you want to measure'. I forgot the author, but the book was titled 'I think, therefore I laugh' (Wittgenstein said if you understood philosophy completely, you can write a book on it that is made up entirely of jokes).

"Professor A has a jar full of fleas (Jar A), and another same-sized jar that is empty (Jar B). Professor A took out one flea from the jar A, and put it before Jar B. He yelled 'JUMP!', to which the flea responded by jumping into Jar B. He then meticulously repeated the activity with every single flea until Jar A is empty.

Now, he reversed the experiment. He took out a flea from the now full jar B, plucked out its legs and put it before Jar A. He yelled 'JUMP!', but the flea did not jump. He then, very meticulously repeated the experiment with every flea, plucking the legs out everytime and yelling 'JUMP!'. All the fleas did not jump, of course. Faced with a monumental 100% success rate in this part of the experiment, he happily noted in his lab journal that:

Fleas without legs cannot hear".

Because I have time

So I will update.

Exams are over, and the sudden liberation left me senseless for the past two days. Yes, I have achieved absolutely nothing in the past two days, with minimal reading/thinking. Time passes when you are dazed.

A state of mindlessness is how I would describe it. It is a feeling of liberation from all woes, all cares, and funny that it all arose from the examination period, when you are tremendously occupied with scoring in a paper, and then............

It is also during this period that, I get the feeling that is constantly lost and regained all the time; nothing matters. Reality is, in a sense what we perceive. That is directly against solipsism (which is a philosophy that can be simplified into a sentence : "I am the only one that exists. The environment and people in it are products of my imagination". ) And naturally, while I doubt solipsism is 'correct' (mountains of logical thoughts against it), you cannot disprove such a notion, simply because we lack the tools to transcend reality. The same argument holds for God.

And from here, allow me to introduce to the world the embryo of my philosophy of reality. It is yet undeveloped, problems are everywhere yet to be solved, but nevertheless it is a project/a viewpoint/statement of problem, call it whatever you want.

The human reality is an egocentric one. Ego here, meaning how we perceive ourselves, and centrism meaning putting it in the centre. Naturally, since we feel inclined to think that we are the most (and not the only) intelligent being on Earth. Haven't came across a dog that blogged, but there certainly are interesting blogs out there (a pair of tooth comes to mind, some cats also).

Well the point is, if we stop in our tracks, stop in our habit of living, and just think about how would an alien perceive us, what can we imagine the alien will think?

We can't.

Why? Think of a room, a square, whatever. You are not in it. Colour every side a different colour. There should be six colours, the colours irrelevant.

Now fix a window on the square, a small one, a peephole, doesn't matter. The only rule being, you can only fix it on one side. And the circumstances are, when you view from the window into the room, you can see only one colour (the room being infinitely larger than the window, theoretically of course).

And that summarizes the argument. If you are born into a world seeing only red colour, then the word 'blue' or 'green' does not mean anything to you. Your viewpoint, in fact your habit of seeing things is accustomed to only from one side. 'Thinking outside the box' is rubbish because while you can tap into dormant ideas in your brain, you cannot escape from your 'red-only' world.

Hence, I define 'logic' and 'reason' something applied purely only to human beings, and maybe the animals/plants that inhabit the same world. This 'world' can extend to the universe, no problem there. But not to unimaginable worlds though.

If you had actually thought of what the alien would think, then you are imposing your view upon the fictional (maybe) alien. Since you don't even know what the alien looks like, much less how it thinks, you cannot for sure imagine anything remotely probably to the alien's way of thought.

If that confuses you, think of a colour outside of the three primary ones (all the colours as we know are mix and matches). Asking you to invent a new basic colour is an impossible task (I wonder if anybody can do that?)

Here I admit, though I stress that this is a thought entirely of my own but not without influences, that there are connections/similarities (some) to Plato's World of Ideas and Kant's idea of Faculties (which I still find it difficult to understand, mostly because its so wordy and heavy that I lose my concentration half a page down).

The central idea of egocentrism is that, because we have no other yardstick, we put ourselves at the centre and measure everything from there. (Copernicus anyone?)

The reason why I have not followed any mainstream religious faith up until now, is purely because I reject the notion of 'God who created Humans'. I do not reject the idea of God though. Blurry, I know.

Simply put, we are not special. And therefore it is presumptous of us to think that God is capable of emotions. Counter-intuitive and antilogic, but that's the gist of it. God cannot be logical because logic as we know it is a human thing. Thus the idea that God loves us, is one that I sense the idea of human arrogance. We seek to describe the undescribable.

Mathematics as we know it can prove many things. Physics thus far is uncovering heaps of facts about our reality.

But we cannot escape from logic, nor reason nor emotions. Those are what defines a human, and interestingly (though not meant to be contradicting) this same rule applies to intelligent animals as well. But that is no justification for such a rule to be imposed on a being not of this reality e.g. God and our alien friend.

Consider this an introduction. Now I have to resolve some conflicts in this theory, namely this theory is subject to the laws it introduces, since the only tools I have in developing this idea is logic and reason.

If you question what the significance is, well, nothing life-changing for you I guess. But it is a way I am trying to understand our existence. An ontological or epistemological quest if you like.

_________________________________________________________

Now, on to my little degenerating activities. I have been watching some animes, new and old. And I shall 'type' of some ideas I gleaned from them.

The first anime is currently an ongoing one, titled 'Shiki'. Literally in Chinese it is written using the words 'Corpse' and 'Ghost' (Shi Gui), but in comprehending it it means a 'Corpse Demon' of sorts. The Japanese words employed the same writings, and the same meaning.

The story is set in a remote village, and a strange family (with a family name Kirishiki, though not written with the Corpse Demon words) moved in. Before long, people began to die, and the local doctor notices the recurring symptoms in people dying (with the assumption that it was an unknown epidemic). Namely anaemia.

Oh yes, this is about vampires by the way, and no they do not glow. Nor are they sex-bombs. The vampires featured in this show are zombie like. They feed on human blood, cannot stand sun and go comatose during daytime. And they were friends of the victims, who still retain all their original thoughts but with an added insatiable hunger.

In my opinion, this is easily better than all your Hollywood shows about vampires (that I have seen, come across or heard thus far). The author discusses the course of actions of the characters very well. I should mention there are two main characters, a teenager and a doctor.

The teenager found out about the secretive, growing group of zombie-vampires and he was determined not to die. Yet when his friend became one, he wanted to save him. It cost him his life, because he persisted and gave blood to the vampire. As of now it is unknown but highly probably that he became one as well.

The doctor is the character that strikes me more. He found out about the zombies, but he is more prudent. In fact, the chief vampire family knew that he knew of them, but they sought no action against him other than a threat (reasons yet unknown though). The doctor, knowing that he would not be believed by the villagers anyway, sought other ways to fight other than screaming about the vampires to everyone.

He wanted a specimen to experiment on, but he cannot catch one. If he catches one (if he could anyway), they will retaliate in full force. Thus he could only watch silently as people fell prey.

Until his wife became a victim. He slowly nursed her in isolation, and waited for her to die. Then, after a few days, just as she was about to turn, he bound her up and began experiments on her, while she cried and screamed unable to understand that she herself had became a vampire. Oh, he cut her up, injected all sorts of stuff from drugs to pesiticides, and when he was finally satisfied he drove the stake through her heart. Gory.

Heartless? Perhaps. But faced with such a situation and knowing no cure nor way to save his wife, it seems the doctor was logical/reasonable enough to take such a course of action. Since the vampires have no access to knowing whether his wife would rise (she was not buried, they only know she died. And not all rise by the way).

I feel the author has sufficient 'darkness' in her work, and it justifies the story thus far. There is no catering to what people would expect (yet), and I have high hopes for the ending. It being original enough I mean.

Personal opinion? One of the best thus far, no doubt.

I have another one to discuss, 'Welcome to the NHK'. But the post is lengthy, and I doubt it will do any good to make it longer.

So I shall update tomorrow. Cheerio!

Books

I think I am most creative when I procrastinate.

I had tons of stuff to write about, everything from intelligent discussions about reality to the downright depressing feelings related to exams. And this was yesterday, before the last exam paper today.

And today, after the exams, I forgot every single thing I intended to write on this blog. (I didn't do it yesterday because I was convincing myself I was not procrastinating. But well, haha...)

Anyway, I dropped by my fav. place in the world after the toilet. The library and the book shop.

And, I found out that Robert Jordan had drafts for three books before he died. THREE. Oh in case you're not familiar with him, he's the guy who wrote the Wheel of Time. Yeah, that book, I read 11. There's 13 now. And the thinnest is 750 pages long. With a font size about this small, in every page. And there's three more, written by some other people based on his draft. Not sure if I'll read it, because the last book I read was pre-SPM if I remember correctly. That's 4 years at least.

And, as I was leaving Borders, I saw Justin Bieber's face. No, not the real guy. The real face slapped on a hardback book. The pretty face took about 75% of the front cover, and the other 25% filled with the words '100% official' and something else.

So yeah, it pisses me off because I hold a sacred view of books. Books are tomes of knowledge. They share imagination, ideas, facts etc. But writing a book of 'How I became famous, how I got inspiration for my mushy songs and how I dealt with the emotional problems when everyone hates me' stuff is not exactly something that turns me on. I detest it, in fact. 

I wrote all these without having listened to a single song by him (an achievement I maintained till now). But the general idea I have of people like Bieber is that, well, shallow. Perhaps it is unfair, perhaps it is unjustified bias. But I just cannot stand the idea of a pre-pub guy singing about love (remember my statistics about 90% of the songs out there being about love). It is a poisoned view, seasoned with media inputs and baked with the camera lights. The idea of everlasting love, with unimaginable freedom and as simple as 'be with me forever', without a shred of responsibility other than the impetus of the rush of emotion.

No, in the long run, this will not contribute anything to humanity. It will serve to entertain and whittle away the time of a disillusioned faceless society. As bad as reading some sappy love story perhaps.

And I am not saying all readings I approve of are of science or philosophical themes. I read fantasy all the way up until last year, before I switched genres (to science and philosophy). I still enjoy other books, comic books and fantasy books in fact. Leisure reading is leisure reading that exercises the mind and stretches the imagination. Reading about how wretched and blessed an idol's life is is not leisure reading.

And I almost began ranting on the state of movies on screen, but I'll consciously avoid that.

My current reading list includes Dawkins, Atkins, Kaku, Kant and Nietzche. Heavy. Throw in Robert Jordan maybe? Oh and Bryson. Bought a whole lot of his books for a bargain and didn't get around to reading them.

Till then, I shall indulge in some nerdy bookworm activities after a depressing period facing coursebooks and textbooks. 

On a side note, I found a really awesome wallpaper of Fate/Unlimited Blade Works that utilizes fully the great laptop I have. That made my day :D 

Study

I really need to do some serious revision, but oh well.

The torrential emotions, namely the dread, the melancholy, the existential angst, the boredom, the lethargy, the distractions, the hopelessness, the pointlessness, and of course not forgetting the brain resistance to input.

With all those massless weightless yet heavy stuff on me, uhhh yeah I am procrastinating.

I shall do my best to cast aside all that is life, the mantle of emotions and focus as a zombie, as a robot would and figure out how to solve engineering problems!

I just wasted perhaps 20 seconds of your life. Cheerio

Edit 6/11/2010
P/S : Came across this passage by Bertrand Russel. In case you don't know who he is, he is a logician/mathematician/philosopher, an interesting one at that because he spent his whole life trying to prove numbers are logical. Numbers are axioms by the way, and axioms are stuff that are correct as we know but cannot be proved. One example is numbers, another example are the laws of thermodynamics. And perhaps one that everyone can relate to is the 2nd law of thermodynamics - Heat always flow from hot to cold (the premise being natural processes of course).

Anyway, the passage goes

"no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling can preserve a life beyond the grave; that all labors of the ages, all the devotions, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of the human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins".

It does poetic justice to the existential angst  (the more proper word should be ontological?) angst in me :D

Somebody grab that running fellah! He's my sanity!!

So yeah, I'm losing it. Let me recount the stupid things these past few weeks :D

1) Being an idiot while doing a group project. Totally embarassed myself.

2) Being smart and asking lecturers questions via email. Totally embarassed myself with the stupid questions.

3) EPIC : Crossing the road when the traffic lights turned green. The car-traffic lights, not the pedestrian lights.

4) Forgetting to bring my cash card. Realized it after I ordered the food and the food is brought before my eyes. No cash at hand, only my debit card. EPIC : Forgot my debit card password. Went to the bank and remembered it AFTER I asked. Cute.

And almost gave wrong directions to a poor lost soul.

I think I'm studying too much = =" I need a rest.

P/S : I think number 3 is uber cool. I almost got ran over xD (its funny! Really! Because when I realized it I realized why people in the car were staring at me)

PP/S : I broke my speakers.