NaNoWriMo 2010: A Tale From Mineworld

"Hurry up, inmates!" shouted the prison guard on duty. "We want this swimming pool done before winter comes!"

Hector could have smiled if he were a contracted worker; the middle of spring had just arrived and for the right price a pool could be laid and set within a week. But as a fellow resident of the Blocker Prison and Rehabilitation Facility, Hector's set of tools consisted only of his hands. Outside, he had used his diamond pickaxe and shovel for all sorts of construction tasks. Inside, he didn't even get a stick. As far as he and the other workers were concerned, the guards and the Warden would be lucky if they finished before autumn.

He slapped both his hands against a rough slab of cobblestone, creating a small fissure on the surface, a minuscule puff of dust rising and falling. He hit it again. And again. He continued to hit it, chipping away piece by piece, needing to crush it for its raw material to form a more perfect cube of pure stone that would be the foundation of the pool, as he knew and as he was instructed. His hands began to bleed, but he took no notice; he even thought that this block seemed softer than most.

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Arrogance Labels

I've tried writing about this before, not here, and unsuccessfully, but I think I have a better picture in mind now that I can share. This is about the label "Arrogance", and public perceptions.

On one extreme, you have Christians who believe arrogance is a sin, and they arrogantly confess their humility. They're used as evidence by rational folk for the dangers of religious thinking and hypocrisy.

On the other extreme, you have Objectivists who believe arrogance is a virtue, and they're used as evidence by rational folk for the dangers of arrogance and stupidity.

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Happy Day 42

Yup, it's 10/10/10, which is binary 42. I know some people believe humanity has a sort of "shared consciousness", and expect that one day we'll all undergo some deep insight or enlightenment at once... Wouldn't that be crazy if it happened today, and we learned the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?

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C does support encapsulation!

Relating to my previous post, I'd just like to mention that C supports encapsulation, and in my opinion much better than C++. It's done using Opaque Pointers.

Here's some code:

#######blah.h########

#IFNDEF H_BLAH

#DEFINE H_BLAH

typedef struct Blah* Blah_handle;

Blah_handle create_blah(void);

void destroy_blah(Blah_handle);

void print_blah(Blah_handle);

#ENDIF

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C++ supports encapsulation? Really?

No, it doesn't. For an excellent reference to make you cringe at the thought that C++ exists so abundantly, read the C++ FQA. Anyway, here's a trivial example of violating "private", which is just one way of showing that in C++ there's really no encapsulation at all.

#include <iostream>



using namespace std;




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New Books!

I got a score (okay, not quite that many) new books from Amazon. I'm really looking forward to reading them, but I don't know how I'll find the time. Here they are:

1. How to Read a Book
2. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases
3. Real Time Rendering (A bible)
4. Chuang Tzu: Basic Wrtings
5. Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity
6. Kushiel's Chosen
7. Kushiel's Avatar
8. Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

Yeah. Wish me luck.

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"Go fuck yourself" is a status signal

It's amazing how often behavior can be explained by status signaling when you look for it. This isn't to say all such behavior is incorrect and to be avoided, but understanding when others, or especially yourself, might not be driven by rational thought as much as believed is important. I'm still learning, too, but finding social signaling and cognitive biases is always a good exercise. "Go fuck yourself" is, typically, putting an end to an argument by saying "I'm high status enough that I don't need to go on wasting my resources arguing with you.", with a possibly corollary being "My status is so high and yours so low that I don't even have to acknowledge you anymore, your status won't increase." And I would say it can sometimes be a rational means to end an argument, though my first restriction would be that there was an argument in the first place. Writing off someone's argument [toward you in general] without even responding isn't allowed.

It seems "you" can be referring to a set of ideas as well, and the above phrase signals your strong opposition to such views. Some views deserve it, though, like Young Earth Creationism, and since an argument advancing that position already has been argued ad infinitum, I think it's right and proper to ignore or mock.

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