PhiloPsycho Freedom

Lately I've been thinking about Thomas Huxley's idea of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters for an infinite amount of time. As the theory goes, they'd eventually recreate Shakespeare's works in their entirety simply due to random hitting of the keys. Don't argue this point, it's true. In fact, they'd not only recreate Shakespeare's works once, but would do so an infinite number of times. The same goes for every other literary work, supposing that they phonetically write out other scripts (like oriental, Cyrillic, Sanskrit, etc.)) and ignore accents that aren't available.

An easier way to wrap your head around this problem is to envision a keyboard that has pebbles being dropped on it, hitting only one key at a time and no others. Given that each key has an equally probably chance of being struck, it will produce every work if left doing this processes for unlimited time. The reason I find this example to be clearer is because most people seem to think the monkeys would have some sort of intent behind their actions, as if they're actually trying to recreate Shakespeare or whatever. This isn't the case - they're simply mashing keys and accidentally making novels.

Expanding from this, I realized that secular reincarnation is capable of happening. It is entirely possible that one or all of three things are infinite: time, space, and/or alternate dimensions. As long as one of these is unlimited, it's quite possible that when we die, our consciousness in its exact form could re-manifest somewhere else. This pulls a lot of things into question, of course. Where does consciousness rest? Is it possible to transmit it? Even if something is structurally identical, will you, as you are now, be part of it? What about a/the soul? Too many questions, really. But, it is promising for any non-religious person who's despairing at the afterlife.

To clarify where I'm coming from, probability theory states that nothing has a 0% chance of happening (aka everything has a chance greater than 0). Even if it's infinitesimally small, it will express itself somewhere in an unlimited number of trials. The real mindfuck here is if you consider omnipresent beings. If every possible combination of things must happen, then somewhere an omnipresent god must exist, and in another place it must not, which violates the first one's power. This clearly demonstrates that there is a limit to the probability curve in practice - we don't have gods walking among us and intervening, as some interventionist religions would believe.

Thus, we should refine the statement to be:

In an infinite universe, anything that is possible must happen.

Note: Do not attempt to actually create the monkey's on typewriters. Only a fucking idiot would expect to see similar results when comparing an infinite sample and an extremely small, finite sample.

When I say Free Will, I'm taking a purely secular stance on the idea. I'm not taking into consideration any God(s) or Goddess(es), I'm looking at it entirely from a non-religious stance.

In a previous post I briefly covered how the determinism works, but I feel that there's more to say on the subject. I used to take the stance that everything is simply action-reaction (or stimulus-response, for you behaviourists), but I've come to realize that it doesn't really change anything. There is always a factor of chance in the world and, supposing things have some uniformity to them, we could see exactly what is going to happen at any given point. This is a very strenuous burden to pose as a possibility because we will likely never be able to figure out exactly how everything works. As Richard Dawkins puts it:

"What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, 'Oh well he couldn't help doing it, he was determined by his molecules."

Though he's right that people rarely, if ever, take that stance, it could be strongly argued in favour of that. But as he said, we need to believe that events are within our control or else we'll develop cases of learned helplessness, and have an entirely external locus of control. I've recently had a radical change in my approach to things, gaining a feeling that whatever comes my way is manageable and within my control to handle. It's a very empowering feeling to be sure, but from a deterministic stance, this was meant to happen because of how things were put together; I was determined to gain this new perspective from the beginning of time. Be that as it may, it doesn't take away any of the perceived freedom I've derived from my environment. I would like to close by calling upon Sartre, yet again, with one of my new favourite quotes:

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you"

For more information on Determinism, here is an interesting video.

A couple days ago, I struck up a conversation with a stranger and it lasted well into the two hour range. While talking to them, we covered a broad range of topics, and one of them was regarding marriage and relationships. I told them that, in my first year of university, I challenged everything I had previously assumed would happen in my life as well as large number of my views. I attacked them viciously to see if I believed them for what they were or because it had always been impressed on me to hold these values, believing them without any merit of their own. Among these was, as I segued in from, marriage and relationships: whether I'd ever want to get married; whether it'd be traditional; the possibility of polygamy; sexual orientation, etc. Some came more automatically than others, but when I mentioned to my conversation partner that I'd given thought to the possibility of polygamy/open-relationships, they were surprised that I'd ever considered that and wondered why I was even thinking about that.

One common response that most people throw at me when they hear that I've considered obscure or often unrelated-to-everyday-life things is that I have too much time on my hands and/or that I think too much. I don't understand the concept of thinking too much unless the person doesn't act. But I act! Oh baby, do I ever act! Sorry, that's another can of worms altogether. I answered their query about why I was thinking about such a topic by referencing a philosopher I'd recently been introduced to (though, he's never going to meet me): Sartre.

Sartre believed firmly in a person's freedom and was adamant about people asserting said freedom. We cannot choose whether to participate or not; we are still a part of everything was a sentiment often expressed by Sartre. He felt that in every activity, we have a choice to act and respond in any of an infinite number of ways. It was not only an option to act, it was forced upon us, condemned to the freedom of choice where inactivity was still an activity. In many ways he is right, which may be surprising to hear me say considering I am a determinist. He believed that we had the responsibility and ability to choose how to react even to things that were inevitable to happen. Take the most inevitable thing possible: our own death. He held that we could choose, at least to some degree, how we would die (e.g. through how we lived, suicide, etc.). It is through this theory through which I explained why I was thinking about polygamy; It is our responsibility to consider our view on something and how we may act in the face of it, or else be surprised when we act in a way we'd never before considered. In such a circumstance, you could surprise even yourself with a reaction that could betray your intentions or give away information about yourself you'd prefer you hadn't. I'd liken it to saying things in anger.

Now, I don't want to hear anyone whining and complaining about how "Oh, but I didn't have a choice! I had to do it!"; I'm not condemning you for anything, but Sartre would have held that we had the choice to go against what we did, and whatever consequences that came with such actions. We have ultimate choice, regardless. We can still choose to kill someone, do drugs, stand up for someone despite a huge mob, scream obscenities in the street at 3am, and the like. Despite what can come from it, the option is still open to us. That's all I'm taking from what he's saying at this time at least, and it's the very reason I like to weigh my opinions on obscure matters.

Now, what can you take away from this? Well, who am I to tell you that? I suppose that if you truly buy into Sartre's theories, it's an ultimately freeing way to think of things. You have the choice to act in any way you want, so take that and run with it.

So this post isn't going to be entirely along the subject matter of my other posts, but I figure it falls into the area of philosophy. What doesn't really fall into some area of philosophy, at least in part? The topic is, as the name implies, about Gym Etiquette, or Etiquette at the Gym if you prefer.

What spurred such an occasion? Well, I was just at our school gym, and it was utterly packed. Not surprising, considering the top two new years resolutions are to get fit and to lose weight, respectively. So, I'm in there looking for a seated bike machine, and there is a lineup for most every cardio machine in the joint (this particular gym is cardio focused). So, I'm next in line to get a bike and I notice this girl, who has been there from the start, biking incessantly slowly and studying. She's not sweating, and the bike she's on is urging her to go faster because it can barely register any activity. I wait ten minutes, and decide my time is better spent doing a rowing machine until someone finishes. Five minutes later, someone gets off and I get a bike directly behind this girl. Any cardio machine in this place has a thirty-minute time limit. So here I am, behind her, reading my book while pedaling very hard and getting a good sweat on. She's continuing her nonchalant workout/studying, emphasis on the studying, causing me to start fuming behind her as I realize beyond a doubt that she's not only wasting a machine during a really busy time, she's also going over the time limit. So I finish up, get off the machine, and someone who was waiting takes mine. I was ready to walk away,  but this shit has got to stop here.

Over this Christmas break, I was in the mall and saw a decorative wall-block that had Only those who believe in miracles will find them inscribed into it. So, upon reading this I began thinking about the validity of such a claim. Ultimately, I broke it down to multiple psychological processes attempting to explain it, though I'm not entirely - though generally - against the idea of miracles.

For starters, such a claim is unfalsifiable - one of the requirements for any theory to have any value for it. It's in the same realm as one of Freud's defense mechanisms known as denial: If we think you have something wrong with you and you disagree.. Denial! Essentially, if you are labeled with something and you don't agree, well, you still have it (according to the diagnoser), you just don't want to admit that unpleasant little fact. Same goes for this little stone-inscribed gem: something good happens to someone who believes in miracles: Hey! It could be a miracle!; Something good happens to someone who doesn't: Hey! Something good happened! But, no miracle. The main problem with this is that it applies to everything, which makes it have no value. Seems kind of counter-intuitive that a theory which is so encompassing is worthless, but it's because it doesn't tell us anything new or of use. Everyone has undetectable parasites in their body? Great, nothing we could do about that, then. Right?

Recently I've been thinking about how we evaluate people's performances. Or rather, I've been thinking about how I, specifically, approach commenting on performances and my family's tendencies while commenting, which is mostly negative. So now I've posed the question to myself, after years of having been exposed to this type of criticism (some constructive, some not): Why do I find it easier to say negative comments over positive ones? What I've concluded is that I've been trained, to a degree, to be able to see faults easier than virtues, but maybe that's the same with most people. But as it is, I've been trying to improve my ability at giving compliments, which is causing me to have to analyze why I have an easier time with one, but not the other.

The Gateway Drug Theory (GDT) is always paraded about in high schools all over the world. It is a rather annoying comment on the society at hand - especially if you look at the drug they choose to demonize. The GDT has a few different version, but this is what I understand of it, picking the attributes that made the most sense to me: the GS is linked to trying harder substances, the environment in which the GS is sold allows for greater accessibility of harder drugs, and the GS causes increased chances of chemical dependence of related substances.

In North America, they generally place all the blame on marijuana as the gateway drug. It's evil! It'll fuck up your life! Try it and you'll be addicted for life! Granted, it does have some adverse effects, it's difficult to get the facts straight due to all the misinformation in the drug culture (e.g. it has never been legal to carry any amount in Canada (or so I was told by an RCMP officer (It was a question! I wasn't charged with anything!))). To me, this seems to be jumping too readily to the side of something they want to demonize and choosing to ignore something they don't want to demonize: Alcohol or Nicotine.

I just finished watching The Nightmare Before Christmas and it reminded me of something that was said in Roy Baumeister's book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (which, by the way, I highly recommend because  it covers the topic very entertainingly and in-depth, with a conversational tone) that says that almost anyone who commits an evil act does not perceive their own actions to be evil. Ironically, most people are trying to do a productive or good act that they think other people will enjoy and benefit from.

My friend and I have this sort of unspoken pact together where we are both trying to live on the "edge" as close as possible. Getting past the conventional meaning that alludes to living fast, dying young, and just having a generally crazy time, our meaning is something else entirely. Ours relies on the theory that everyone has a comfort zone, and we aim to get outside of said comfort zone in order to attain maximum growth.

I break it down into three major components of the self: Intellectual, Social, and Physical. The main goal is to push yourself to meet and surpass your comfort zone to within a range that leads to optimal growth (zone of optimal growth or ZoOG, if you will). This range is rather small, somewhere between complete comfort and extreme anxiety/failure. The goal within this is to push yourself just slightly past your current limits, attempting to expand them and, eventually, reach self-fulfillment (with regards to ability).

First, I think I should at least give a nod to the fact that I haven't been writing in forever: It's exam time, here at the University of Waterloo, and because of that I have had neither the will to write nor the time to do so. To anyone who has been following this, I apologize for that inconvenience, I will be back to writing semi-regularly for the next while. On the upside, this break has allowed me to come up with a number of fresh ideas to write about which should last me until the end of the year. That being said, on with the show:

Money. Something that everyone wants and nobody has enough of, it seems. But what is the end for such a drive? Ultimately, I'd argue that people are doing this for happiness, at least in western society. We use money as a representation of resources, opting to trade it instead of actually trading a resource itself. This is relatively obvious, but I think people forget that this paper-ish cotton is nothing more than a symbol of goods and services, with  no inherent value in and of itself. Without anyone to trade with, this paper will help you no more, and probably less, than toilet paper.

Today I thought I'd talk about advertisement. Do we actually pay as much attention to them as we think? or are we persuaded by external factors?

To start, I thought sexual content would be good because it's used over-abundantly. As they say, Sex Sells. But is that really the case? What research has actually been showing for the past while is that women aren't as persuaded by sexual content in advertisement, which isn't entirely a surprise. Obviously, the sexual content is there to sell the product to the male viewers, right? Well, that's what they're hoping, but what research is now showing is that when there's sexual content directed at males, men pay more attention to that content rather than the product; they're more likely to remember the girl (if they're straight) than they are to remember what the commercial was selling.

When it comes to interpreting rules or laws, there are two main interpretations for them. In law, there are several different jurisprudences (the science or philosophy of law) other than just spirit or law (for example, feminist jurisprudence), but I feel that these two are the most pervading and easily understood when applying to everyday situations.

Aside from the obvious technological problems, let's look at some different possible theoretical outcomes involved with time travel. I'm only going to focus on traveling to the past because that's the only one I can see any problems with at the moment.

To start, let's say there's something I want to change. I think it's impossible to go back and change that particular problem without causing yourself to be sent off in some sort of infinite loop. Think about it. You have this problem, you go back and you fix the problem. Simple right? wrong. You go back and fix the problem, which means that the problem, as you knew it and had instigated you to go back, no longer exists. Thus, you didn't go back to change it, causing it to never be fixed (and subsequently remain), causing you to go back again. This loop will continue on forever, since you'll constantly be altering the time-line and you will have no memory of any of the activities.

I came across a blog named Atheist Spirituality and thought that I’d write a reply to one of their posts.

First, I'd like to say that I like the quote that they took from the movie "Waking Life". Great movie, check it out - though, be prepared to take a break halfway through. It's very philosophy heavy.

Personally, I'm not entirely convinced with the idea of existentialism. I'm not for the idea that god controls our actions, but I don't believe that we have entirely free will, either. Through this post, they discuss what reality we're left with if we discard the idea that god is a guiding force in our lives. They propose that we should seize the day; Carpe Diem!

There are many problems with this theory of consciousness that we call the soul.

First, this anthropocentric notion that only humans have souls is ridiculous. Why would only human's have souls? Why not all living beings? or everything, for that matter? What makes humans so special? Many people will probably answer that humans are god's chosen species, and that we're special like that. Do we think that we're so grand that we'll reign forever? Nothing lasts forever, just look at fossil records. Dinosaurs, had they had the cognitive capacity to think this, would have thought that they were god's chosen species. Also note that humans weren't around at that period, which means our reign is a relatively short period of this planet's history.

So, after saying how I enjoy a factor of chance in my life, I would like to look at the opposite of chance: determinism.

Determinism is the belief that there are founding laws in every object, no matter the size. The bigger constructs' rules are made from the combined laws of the smaller constructs' that they are comprised of.