: not a blog

11 mar 07

Can I be in your animation as a God?

no.

do you remember what FAE is (Fundamental Attribution Error)? it's the tendency of human beings to assign personality-based (rather than circumstantial) causality to events. example 1: if the administrator on a socially interactive computer system is part of the social pool, people are more likely to blame problems on him (malicious deletion, etc). example 2: if someone is tailgating you in traffic, you tend to think "this person is being an assohle" vs. "this person isn't paying attention".

a belief in god is the most fundamental of fundamental attribution errors -- feeling that an imaginary personality casues every event; personifying the universe, essentially. "belief" in a god might be nothing more than a cognitive bias.

i enclose "belief" in quotation marks because it's not an active intellectual effort to believe in god -- it's an instinct, and one that i share. i don't believe in god, but i pray. if i can't find a street, i say "god, please help me find this street". a lot of the time, i call him a fucking asshole cocksucker, sarcastically tell him "thanks! i love it when you fuck me in the ass! please, god, fuck me harder in the ass, because i love it!", or ask "please, just this once?".

i give Him a pretty hard time.

so, yes -- i most certainly feel the presence of god. and furthermore i'm not entirely a maltheist (the aforementioned fucking asshole cocksucker god) -- sometimes i thank Him (if i happen to find the address). i attribute a lot of things to luck. "luck", for all intents and purposes, might be called the same thing as "god".

i have mixed feelings on free will, but i mostly think it's a republican pipe dream. example: a lot of young adults, when they find some success and wealth, become insufferably cocky, and develop an "i managed to pull myself up by my bootstraps -- why can't you?" attitude, while totally ignoring circumstantial causality, including organic brain features (some people are designed and built to be "type-a" pricks, wherease some are designed and built to prefer lying on the couch watching "gilligan's island" to building investment portfolios).

but the determinism i often whip out isn't a theistic one -- "god" isn't out there, pulling the strings (at least i know this intellectually, although i sometimes feel otherwise). it's just that events are preceded by causes, whether or not the effects of those causes have many possible outcomes or not ("quantum randomness"). people who equate free will with quantum effects have read too much sci-fi, in my opinion.

i used to write a lot about this, but i never really got anywhere, so i stopped. i feel like i'm teasing the pipe on which i used to suck with my trembling lips here, so i'd best ease off.

the "only" thing i arrived at was the existence of a quantum panthestic god, constituting and comprising both all reality and all consciousness. it's all semantics, though, and everyone thinks about these things in different ways. communication is mostly all in your own head.

oh. you said "a god", not "god". in that case, sure -- the next time i make an animation with a god in it, i will name it "rahul". i was going to put in a clever bit about "rahul" actually meaning "buddha", but in fact it doesn't; this is a relatively innocuous example of the bits of false hearsay that are passed on, usually without the conscious knowledge of the person trumpeting the given assertion.

"rahul" actually means "able" or "efficient" in sanskrit. the confusion comes from the fact that "rahul" was the name of one of buddha's sons.

rahul is my only reader. hi rahul! you still owe me that indian buffet. furthermore, i have spring break now! maybe i can come up one of these days. let me know.

my web hits consit of people searching google images for a sikh kirpan, those following a link from the wikipedia article on personal FM transmitters, and rahul.

rahul, rahul, rahul. we have a special relationship, the three of us (me, this blog, and rahul).

now, here are some observations that i don't feel like turning into complete essays. some of them are unspeakable truths. others are google searches. most are just stupid:

1. how does our society feel about play-fighting?
2. "own your gmail client"
3. "want to be alone all day"
4. "how to move a computer -- learning how to "move a computer"; how people who will learn this all will be much more likely to succeed in the field of robotics
5. "the dark side" has become a meme -- a religious meme.
6. "the internet makes you conservative"
7. the importance of having a hard drive in a safe
   the importance of building and living in a safe
   the importance of being enclosed in a safe at all times
8. if you work your ass off in art class, it's better.
9. you're an artist as long as you benefit society
   you're a kind of servant -- those who do not like servitude may not want to be an artist.
10. say to yourself: "i am not an artist?"
11. saying "an artist" is sort of like saying "i'm a freak"
12. designers have to design "whole companies"
13. "what are your qualifications?"
    "i'm an artist and i'm always early."
14. "Hello", he said.
    VS.
    Hello," he said.
    quoted items should never really be close to the end of the parens
15. writing about writing might be fun
    start a writing column
16. loaning money to people might be the way to go
17. get to know yourself" isnt' a metaphor -- it means "get to know yourself better".
18. collect resumes, too.
19. manpower is a leech off IBM
    Results 1 - 10 of about 13 for "i want to work for IBM". (0.37 seconds)
20. ask some people: "who am i?"
21. i have to get in shape
    i've been getting angry again
    inspiration that might not be right: become a publisher
22. it's important to go on a quest to find out who you are
23. try to design some characters
    try to sell them
    research some more
    become rich
24. the importance of dying and being born again
25. it might be obvious that i'm disabled
    so, i had better make myself good-looking
    it's *so* important to people for me to be good looking
26. "america is the market"
27. lawyers make you all want to feel that the world is a frightening place, because this gives them more money.
28. "the world is a frightening place, and you need a lawyer"
29. "how many domains do you own?"
    "one".
30. "Google, why don't you like me anymore?"
31. it's good to stockpile and archive
32. "don't be afraid of the government anymore"
33. "is the quality of art important?"
    "YES!!!!"
34. keep detailed files -- file events away not only in your mind, but learn to "think" with material objects.
35. "on what computer do you become most adept?"
36. what are the advantages of running almost no programs?
    the few you run run a lot faster
37. how do you define ownership?
38. best career: electronics lawyer
39. MS in legal electronics OR JD in electronic law
40. the military makes its intelligence public
    i gather military intelligence from the web
    then organize the data
41. famous journalist
42. i don't really have a boss
43. it is good to own a lot of scientists -- dream up creative projects for them to do. then just set them on it.
44. "the importance of looking good and being sexy" by satan
45. Personalized Results 1 - 10 of about 30,800 for "i am satan". (0.32 seconds)
    now did someone just tell me there's not a lot of satanism going on?
46. trust me -- you're not going to go to hell.
47. it's important to plan for your own death.
    "plan for your own death"
48. "just be fucking rich and make sure the state doesn't get it"
49. Personalized Results 11 - 20 of about 24,700 for "still doing research". (0.21 seconds) -- this indicates that being a researcher is a not-bad idea.
50. there's a secret that no one believes: paying for school is not a problem.
52. the united states is nothing more than the military directed from washington.
    the people in it.
    a chunk of land.
    is it wrong to love your country?
    Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "is it wrong to love your country?". (0.28 seconds)
    be a dual citizen, living on the border
53. the google search on "postgraduate school" (with the quotes in the search itself) yields 991,000 hits.
    the search on "postgraduate career school" (also with the quotes in the search) yields 1 hit.
54. DO RESEARCH AND CREATE ARCHIVES
55. people are inventing their sources on wikipedia

i am a friggin weirdo.