Money

Gotta love Randall Munroe's xkcd.com.  It's full of interesting stuff, like this poster: http://xkcd.com/980/  I don't know what motivates him to undertake these sizeable projects by himself (I assume), but it's impressive to me even if there are flaws to be found.

Listening and Loving

I understand that in order to truly love others, we first need to truly love ourselves, for by understanding our own feelings and needs we come to understand how others may feel and what their underlying needs are.  (How those needs are being met (if at all) is another question.)

Needs can be categorized.  Air, water, and nourishment are needs for our biological functions as organisms.  Without the taking in of these outside substances we will not love live for long (although "long" is a relative term anyway).  Obviously we need a certain amount of space in which to function, and we need to be either free of or resistant to disease and other threats to our health.  Given that the environment we live in can be treacherous, clothing and shelter are often listed as needs that also preserve our survival, and rightfully so.  But, in the words of Jesus, "Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" (Matthew 6:25)

If the aforementioned needs may be termed "physical" needs because they apply directly to our interaction with the physical world, then they are different from the emotional, mental, and/or psychological needs of which some speak.  Instead of being dependencies for our survival, these needs seem to indicate some higher aim of life that suggests stability and harmony with one's surroundings.

I admit that I am sceptical by personal bias of what many claim to be these non-physical needs.  This probably springs from the fact that I did not at first distinguish that "needs" could imply anything other than that necessary for our biological sustainment from day to day.  So to list other items as such seemed unnecessary; in fact, it seemed a sign of weakness, because if one being's needs is a larger superset of that of another, the former obviously requires more to live and be happy.  ("Happy", now that's a word that demands some explanation.)  Since we all want to live and be happy, the less required to achieve that the better, it would seem.

In addition, these other needs are much more subtle.  In the noisy and distracting world in which we live it is often hard to pay attention to our emotional needs and what our hearts are telling us.  I would say that it requires discipline, focus, and experience to really listen to the heart, discern what our needs are, and act in such a way that our needs are met in the optimal way possible.  On the other hand, it's pretty easy to notice a growling stomach, a parched tongue, a blocked airway, an icy hand, and so on.

Nowadays I acknowledge their existence, but only because I feel them not being satisfied in my own soul.  I still don't completely trust the apparent "authorities" on the subject because it is a matter that seems so personal and so difficult to prove.  Everyone's situation and life is unique, so I don't think there is one cookie-cutter solution to anyone's heart.  In addition, my religious views certainly affect my thinking, and lead me to discredit (though not in ignorance) many views that contradict my faith.

This is something I feel like I am in infant stages still in understanding, but I'm just glad I've been able to stumble across it because living life without understanding why I feel certain ways or why doing certain things is necessary is pretty hard for a why-er like me.

Proving Kernels Correct

This stood out to me originally because I listened to Schneier speak at my university one afternoon a year or two ago.  That, and we've been learning about correctness proofs for programs.


http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/proving_a_compu.html

Computer Tricks

I've grown up with computers since the days of DOS, so I like to think that I know a thing or two about general usage.  But this link shared by a friend of mine has taught me several new tricks on Windows: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/mofir/whats_a_computer_trick_you_think_everyone_should/

I thought this quote was fun: "Watching someone who knows their Excel do work is like watching someone play the piano. or starcraft."  Haha...  Or the one about using F2 to rename a file or group of files, and Tab to jump to the next one, in which somebody said, "You just changed my life."

Some that I didn't know but want to remember are: Ctrl + L for selecting the address bar text, Space and Alt + Space to scroll page by page in a web browser (just slightly more convenient than Pg Up and Pg Dn), Ctrl + Alt + [Arrow Key] for rotating display to selected direction, Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, F2 to rename a file or file group, [Ctrl/Alt] + [Backspace/Del] will remove or undo removing an entire word forwards or backwards.

Equivalency

From chapter 8 of the AI book.

Is the following a  valid (necessary true) sentence?

For all x, either Smart(x) or x = x is true.

Does there exist an x such that x ≠ x (you're welcome for checking on the HTML code for the mathematical "not equals" operator instead of the C-style !=)?  I suppose it depends on our notion of equivalency.  If x is the object that is not equal to anything, not even itself, then this statement is false.  But this self-referencing definition is only constructed for the purpose of creating a paradox, and it is only unique by its own assertion and not by objectivity.  By what seems like a general notion of equivalency, two objects' values can be compared or two objects' identities can be compared.  Certainly the value of x is equal to itself, and so is the identity.  Even if x is indeed the object that is not equal to anything, not even itself, it actually is equal in value and identity to itself no matter what it claims.  So I am going to answer that this is valid.

Quick E

First post in a new blog, smells like opening up a new book or something.

Don't have much time since I am working on AI homework that is due tonight, but I wanted a place to put all my fleeting thoughts that aren't usually appreciated by general audiences.  We'll see how often I refer to them.

What is on my mind is this quote from "the AI book": "For nondeductive tasks such as learning from experience, outcomes are necessarily dependent on the form of the representations used."  One way of saying this is that what you learn from your life experiences is dependent on how your view your environment.  This chapter is interesting because it talks about how our native language affects our way of thinking.  Certainly other factors influence our thinking and therefore our "representations used", but the one that is particularly useful to point out is that our agency affects the outcomes of our learning from experience.  The "spin" we choose to put on things, so to speak.  This all sounds less profound until you connect the dots with language and thoughts.