Good Procrastination

In general, procrastination isn't a desirable thing. But within the sphere of procrastination are two distinct types which we can label good and bad. The bad kind is the kind most often derided by world + dog: the person is typically a student, and always procrastinates assignments, thus they never get done on time (if at all) and the student barely manages to pass (if at all). Also, and this is an important note, the activities the student chooses to do instead of the schoolwork typically fall under something mindless like watch T.V., play endless video games, and in general do things requiring little attention span or intellectual power.

I now introduce the good kind of procrastination. The first half of it can be the same as the first half of bad procrastination--barely making it through school--but the ideal is getting A's, and the way a good procrastinator does this is knowing exactly how long they can procrastinate something and still get it done. Basically, putting it off until precisely the last minute. I'm pretty good at this, though I do slip up every so often, but a simple example from High School was me always doing my French homework during the period right before French. Sometimes I'd have more French to do than usual, in which case I'd usually just start two periods before French, but it was very rare for me to do French homework at a non-procrastinating time (like the night before around 7pm). I nevertheless did well in the class, and my assignments were for the most part correct. In Chemistry, I barely managed to do even some of the assignments, and that ended up hurting my grade (because homework was worth so much) that I didn't pass the class by a huge margin. I'd try doing some of the assignments during lunch before the class, but more often than not the assignments required more time than that, and frankly I didn't see it as worth it.

The other half of good procrastination, more important than the first half, is what you choose to do in place of what you're supposed to be doing. Quoting myself:

See Full Post and Comments

Sort of a use for variable-variables!

Variable-variables, as I call them, are variables whose names are constructed from other variables. In PHP, they look like this:

<?php

$var1 = 'newvar';

$$var1 = 'variable-variable';

echo "$newvarn";

?>

Of course, this will echo "variable-variable". When I construct $$var1, it creates a variable called $newvar in the namespace, because it's using the value of $var1 for the name of this new variable.

See Full Post and Comments

Complete Proofs

Well, I just stumbled upon this awesome site here.. They have proofs for essentially all of mathematics that go down to the axioms.

http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/0.999....html

And hey, even a proof that 0.999... = 1. Fancy that. Ah well. Comment system should be up by Sunday morning (Pacific), and if it's not I'll eat...er, not eat my breakfast. (Hey, I can't commit myself too much on this can I?)

See Full Post and Comments

Does studying math lead to learning more truth?

I think it does. I offer my friend as a case study. At one point he thought you could divide by 0; he finally gave that up I think. Now he believes 0.999.... does not in fact equal 1.0. Here's a list of proofs for a reader who also doubts the fact that 0.9999... = 1. Yes, my friend has seen these, can't find anything wrong with them, but still holds onto his belief.

He's not a math guy, he's not a science guy, and he's only recently become a philosophy guy. Okay, a single-philosophy guy. He knows some Objectivism, but that's it. He's become a Guardian of the Truth, instead of a truth-seeker.

This is why I think learning math (and science) will lead to more truth. If you accept a philosophy as absolutely true, you're going to be limited in how much you can discover afterward. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem states that not all truths can be derived from any finite set of axioms, and Objectivism has only three axioms (at least one of which isn't an axiom but a tautology). Also, when you don't accept something even after having it proved to you, you are no longer to be trusted as knowing any true statement when you can discard proofs for or against at whim.

See Full Post and Comments

Nanotech will probably come first

So I just read this Nanotech article and I thought: "Damn, this is already possible?" It doesn't seem to be long now before we'll have nanobots that self-replicate as well. Right now I can only hope humans are responsible enough with the vast power nanotech gives to not screw up into a grey goo scenario.

Is it better that Friendly Artificial General Intelligence should come first, though? Of course it's impossible to halt progress on nanotech and focus all efforts at FAI, but if it we could, should we do it?

One of the arguments for doing FAI first is that humans are notoriously untrustworthy. The moment nanotech looks promising, the governments will swoop in and weaponize it. When nuclear energy started coming about, really the first application was in a very destructive bomb. Even now its nicer, energy-producing capabilities still aren't fully harnessed, but you can guarantee there are still many nuclear weapons in the world. And with the Middle East situation, why would any of those countries not want nukes when Israel has several? Personally I actually believe Iran wants it for power, not for weapons, but that's another topic.

See Full Post and Comments

Philosophy is Easy

I'd like to just stop there, because it's obvious to me. It should be obvious to any serious computer programmer, scientist, or mathematician.

But of course any philosophers would be offended... Still, this shouldn't be very long...

Okay. I'm too lazy to look up the actual numbers, but doesn't it seem reasonable that there are more philosophy majors than math majors, and more women in philosophy than women in math? (I am not implying that men are smarter than women; I am implying that men are more spread out to the extremes than women and that's why you see more brilliant men but also more men in prison.)

See Full Post and Comments

Where Philosophies Break Down

Do you find yourself possessing a philosophy that explains everything? That helps you out in every possible aspect of your life, that's just all around perfect? You'd recommend it to every single human, and fully expect it to enrich their lives after they've adopted it?

If so, I don't think you're looking at it hard enough.

Make a list of every occurrence your philosophy has helped you. Not where it theoretically would help you, where it has actually helped you in your past. Do these constitute a very broad range of possibilities? Are you still sure it's a perfect philosophy applicable to all of mankind?

See Full Post and Comments

Older Posts Newer Posts