Jan 16, 2010
Today I have been more productive in the tasks I want to get done than the past two weeks. What stops a person from doing what they want to do when they don't have to do anything? Procrastination, laziness, sloth, and depression are keywords for the type of feeling a person has when they are unwilling or incapable of doing what they want. The question of whether it is volition or predetermined is of great importantance. If it is volition a person can choose whether they are able to do what they want. If it is predetermined the person simply must wait until the period of inactivity is over. If we are convinced that the inaction is by choice we must find a way to force ourselves to act.
And so I have turned the corner and I don't know how. Perhaps it was encouragement from others in other projects, perhaps it's a sense of accomplishment that another project is finished. Does it make sense that a person would be unwilling to work on one project while another is in limbo or a broken state? Even if you aren't directly working on that project knowing that your future depends on it is enough to cause anxiety. This anxiety is probably enough to cause a form of depression or escapism. When I worry about the unknown I have two choices: do something about it or let it continue. Each has consequences and benefits. Often the choice to do something causes such fear and doubt that a person will avoid the very reasoning that should cause them to do something. This type of awful loop is certainly the cause of much grief in many people's lives. I am not at the point where I will give self- improvement advice to others but if my logic is correct a person might be able to understand something on their own based on my rather lame blog.
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Oct 28, 2009
Click the links to my Toorcon Talk Video and Advanced Code Relationship Mapping Slides.
I don't have enough time to go into details. You can tell that it's me because the links are pretty obviously to video and my site.
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Oct 11, 2009
I will be covering three topics very poorly tonight. Don't worry, I'll lay it out step by step as well as I can.
First off, this philisophical topic is incredibly rich and complex. I could write a dozen good essays about it and I can't even start to write a good one tonight but I'd like to discuss it. You see in order to discuss what I want to discuss, I have to explain to the casual reader why it's important and what is going on, which makes a pretty decent introduction. On Thursday I went to a talk by ACLU-WA about the Patriot Act and current surveillience tactics by the federal and local governments. The ACLU and EFF both oppose the provisions of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional. I've talked about the problem of the Patriot Act a few times before. The Supreme Court is allowing the constitution to be raided by corrupt and ignorant politicians and law enforcement is abusing the laws they are sworn to uphold. In the name of anti-terrorism, they are arresting anti-war activists for attempted disorderly conduct. That's right here in Washington State. These peaceful activists will be suing the government before long for infringement of their civil rights. But as I have said before the judiciary doesn't seem to care about the constitution anymore. It's practically done for. In the EFF's lawsuit against the NSA, Obama and the Attorney General have claimed National Security yet again. Without reasonable proof there is no reason why a military agency (the NSA is part of DoD even if it's budget is secret) should be allowed to operate against US citizens, let alone be allowed to wiretap all citizens without any suspicion.
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Sept 30, 2009
My talk just got accepted for Toorcon San Diego 11. It's an incredible honor that I completely hope to live up to by working my tail off for another 26 days. I'm happy about everything and I'm looking forward to swimming in the ocean no matter how cold it is.
I told my mother about my interest in the singularity today. The singularity explains the slope of exponential technology growth when it is impossible to keep up with it. The explanation I gave my mother is like showing a television to a child. The television does something that the child understands but the child doesn't understand why. Confusion with sufficiently advanced technology is certainly expected (the CEO of Amazon thought DSL was complex in 2003) but that isn't what the singularity is about. The singularity assumes that the change in technology will be more rapid than any single human can understand a reasonable sized chunk. You can understand your specialty and you can understand what your colleagues say, but a person can't understand the gadgets they will need to carry around. But education is incredibly important to people in our society. It doesn't take long to document what you're doing, but even with completely open source it takes far longer to understand how something works than to figure out how to use it. With user interfaces improving by repetition and copying as well as impressively intelligent designers putting time into UI, understanding will always be behind usage. If we assume that technology will continue to grow exponentially, we are in for a treat as it washes over us like HG Well's Eloi in the classic Time Machine. My plan is to reassess the situation every so often and decide what to do on a case by case basis. Planning too far ahead for something like the singularity seems like a bad idea.
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