Of Karma and Justice

First of all, it is important to agree that Justice involves interactions within a group, in a world of 1 justice makes little sense. This would suggest a definition of Justice along the lines of:

Justice is achieved through the optimization of individual well-being throughout the group, i.e. maintaining each individual's well being near the mean of the group.

Game theory, would suggest that in a changing dynamic world, with limited, yet growing resources; the reality of Justice as a virtue allows the group (a species) to profit from behavior such as empathy, and self-sacrifice; which would explain how said emotions have become embedded within many species throughout evolutionary time.

Karma expresses the flow of well-being towards achieving Justice as it relates our evolved emotional responses to events and our actions. It is similar to keeping count of standard deviations from the mean.

Many ways of achieving justice have bean thought out; most religions deal extensively on the subject as do all political systems. In the end; justice as something more complex than even the simplest cooperative games is NP - complete and we will continue forever changing and optimizing our laws and beliefs regarding our communal well-being to our current situations.

As sentient being, I agree the pursuit of justice is a responsibility we hold to ourselves, it is crucial to our survival.

Heart Broken

I remember telling someone, on her porch one afternoon: "That's because you have never really had your heart broken, and I will do my best so it never is."

Although I consider the promise was kept, it's easy to falter and maybe believe an impeccable heart to be an unwanted gift. There is a story of an old man whose' wounded, grieving heart he would not trade for that of a boy. A beautifully intact heart which was so naively boasted through the town; the story ends with the boy giving the old man a piece of the suddenly incomplete organ, and is an analogy of giving one's self in love.

In that boys eyes, and specially in these times, Love is a sentiment too often confused with desire, and self-adorement (narcissism), so the phrase: 'you must loose something to understand its real worth' urges one to believe a heart must be broken / given before one can understand its value, yet I believe in empathy. Time has bestowed upon life an infinitely powerful tool of comprehension, of understanding reality not only though our own eyes, but from those around us, of allowing us to share the responsibility of a better world.

It could be argued, that empathy is the root emotion behind the search for Justice (in another post, I quote a French philosopher who state Justice is an invention of man, and as such a responsibility of man unto himself.) So, if Love is a sentiment to be put to good use it must be born though Empathy, Comprehension, Dedication, Patience and Understanding, it must be a sentiment of Sharing, of reciprocal Trust and Cooperative Growth.

I recently heard a song: "What is love without lust" (La Roux - In For The Kill) and its something little short of coming from the black bible and a willingness to over-weigh self-adulation, self-fulfillment above all other things.

In that sense, and living through heart-breaks myself, there will always be choices in life. Choosing to be heart broken, is just as selfish as choosing lust. Evolution has seen to it so that our empathy, and sense of justice, prohibit us from attaining happiness if not through what we have identified as the virtues of life.

Some references:

• LifeScience - Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others
• Roots of Empathy
• BBC News - Monkeys show sense of justice
• Shareable - Birds do It. Bats do It.
• Love of All Wisdom - Can justice make you happy?
• Suite101 - The Psychopath Antisocial
• Wikipedia - Psycopathy

I just can't keep it to myself

My mom, like the guy in this story has decided to invade my personal choices with her own opinion. She has started a campaign of sprinkling holy water on me now...

Its fun seeing her give me gods blessing and drawing the cross on my forehead; often times I struggle against the urge of playing some prank on her, like yelling: It Burns, It Burns!. I strongly suspect she'd fall to the floor and pray, my lord forgive him, my lord save him. Or something less dramatical, like fake a small wince, and have her spray a little more, and hug me. and then play around with that; but hey, I choose not to, specially since God would punish me if I did.

As a closing argument; an 18 year old boy speaks on why he has chosen to ignore faith: MilenaC

My new phone

0.9999... == 1

How can 0.9999... be equal to one? Won't a little always be missing? "Embrace the power of infinity"...

A daimond in the rough

Just as bad seeds grow in beautiful gardens, you can sometimes find a gorgeous soul amongst corrupted minds. Variety such a beautiful burden... Synonymous to existance...

Day after Thanksgiving.

Yesterday I was reminded about my writing on relationships last year, and was asked how my thoughts on the subject had changed... still, one year later, the gist of the admittedly polar dissertation remains.

There is one note we could extract from an economist's super-rational model of the mind; one simple addition: the role of Wanting, It is simply too painful to accept a partner's loss of interest, yet; beyond reasonable justification, illusion falls prey to reality and change inevitably looms over previous conception of a relationship; making the desire to sustain it either weaker or stronger.

In other words, Love must be fleeting to require hard work and understanding, and some form of self-realization is inextricable from maintaining a healthy relationship. In this tone I give thanks to every human being who finds self-realization in the happiness of others; you are the essence of humanity and the pillars of its achievements.

Authentic Hapiness

These questionnaires are referred to in the video, and I invite you to take at least one and observe your self-perception, after all; and for obvious reasons not mentioned in the video, happiness is also a function of self-perception, those three lives (watch the video) must be self-perceived (filtered, or weighted for the math literate); whatever the facts may be, any delusion renders them useless.

Actually, I believe delusion is quite common, for example, a group of students from ITLA left for Cuba to participate in an international ACM competition. They effected their best effort and achieved the 20th position by solving 1 problem in the set. They came back enthused over the experience, motivated towards achieving a better performance next year.

An excellent advancement, no doubt, their is no previous example. But lets give a little perspective to the situation: how many countries participated?
2
This means, Cuba was not only able to produce 31 additional teams for the competition, but 58% of those teams outperformed our single selection; twice (there was also a warm-up competition in which we placed 19).

An incorrect, but possibly more illustrative statement would be:
Out of 2 countries, we placed -19

The participants are themselves math illiterate, statements like: 1/3 is an irrational number, sqrt(x) is a function from engineering students in college shed further light into our national situation which we seem so bent on ignoring. Our actual GNP is in enormous proportion coming from gifs and drug trafficking, it seems we simply accept our fates as tripping billies (beautiful song by the way).

In any case, and to conclude: the video is very good, and should be compared with its buddhist counterpart. Take the test, delusions help us cope; ignorance is bliss as they say, but authentic happiness, profound happiness is gained through the depth of knowledge; and coming back to this ideals, we are going to start a work-group for math literacy and computer science at kindleit.

A Contraluz

Bocatabú es una banda de lo más agradable, muy buena composición musical y lindas letras.

A Contraluz de Bocatabú.

Abortion - Religion - Stupidity.

I am enraged.

Every time I hear arguments against legalizing abortion I am dragged into rageful despair; the argument tends to state: all life is precious, and it begins on the moment of conception; so society must protect it, at ANY cost. This argument is carried out from beginning to end loosing respectability at each step:

1. most everyone agrees on life's preciousness,
2. about 40% of the world is certain life begins at conception and not birth,
3. finally, it can be argued: virtually no one would kill a random family of 3 to birth a child.

It is easy to understand how it can become a sensitive issue, but every time some fanatic starts arguing for outright abolishment I simply realize how dumb we all are. Stupidity is arguably why religion is so in tune with power, its simply too easy for man to become sheep; to blindly obey and disregard the beautiful causality which exists in our universe. It starts with imagining someone or something being able to do whatever they/it wants and then replacing whatever causal rules actually exist and are observable in this universe with something else.

There is a conscientious and logical deductive path that guides us towards a challenging observation: we need to make all us dimwits smarter, at least in our capability of foresight (or causal search if you will). Enough of this, its amazing how much we need to advance, that we REALLY DON'T SEE WHATS RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!

I propose a worldwide goal:
Raise the global IQ level by 30 points (obviously without recalibrating the scoring statistics). This should be a stated global incentive.

Scientology, what the hell is it anyways?

I always thought of scientology as an agnostic's excuse towards spirituality, and in some ways it actually is :). After seeing these videos it seems a lot like an advanced version of reflection on human religion and spirituality. Something born from what rational and analytic minds go through when completating "life's questions"; almost a scientific approach to spirituality.

Why almost? Because it lacks one of science's most crucial natures: skepticism. True skeptics would find serious flaws for the argument of "Thetans"... Anyways, it seems to do a great job at keeping the pretty parts of religion.

Checkout the wikipedia article on the subject, or look into the auditing video 'which is the basis for scientology'...Auditing or the full sequence that describes scientology (by scientologists: scientology church

In an odd way, this could fit very well into what a friend of mine will end up believing...

At the end, justice is mentioned

This is probably a most excellent discourse on the pursuit of our dreams, sacrifice and tragedy. In 15 minutes, Alain de Botton manages to expand on years of thought and analysis into our social systems; just listen to another individual defend herself in this society he describes: Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

This video presents a simple perspective, a poetic perspective on another angle to this point. And the question arises: is there indeed balance in success?

Even now, with friends, inclined towards meditation, heightened awareness, and inner peace, you only come to realize life is about sustainable change. Not even evolution, as much as simple change; albeit forever attempting to reduce entropy.

For example: is this man a looser, or simply misfortunate?

The Venus Project

Watch live video from Zeitgeist-TV on Justin.tv

It took me a long time to view the Zeitgeist videos, the first one, is a sensationalist exposition of the obvious to me; the second video is rather a critique on the current money system that presents Jacque Fresco and the Venus Project. I find myself agreeing deeply with him, on several fronts, and his ideas far more radical than my own. I'm not sure a 'resource economy' is anywhere close to being achievable. I might believe, we will someday get there, or something very similar to that position, but I see only one serious flaw in his ideas: he gives too much credit to man's intelligence, and seems overly optimistic on man's necesity to advance.

I unfortunately believe that most men, like most other animals, are short sighted brutes who will work for food. This is normal, natural and not meant to be demeaning to our species. This applies to both those who are working for their food, and the elite who does not have to. They are both, as human, too short sighted to understand and care enough for these views. I believe we first need to make every human, at least as smart as him.

Role model

Mom: You came in very drunk last night!
Son: I'm sorry, my friend just split up and we went for drinks, he said he wanted to forget
Mom: Thats no excuse, do you think your brother went to drink when he was left? He went out running. Thats how he handled it.
Brother: When I woke up at 4 or 5 am, with chills and hypertension, I just went running... it worked...
Mom: There is no excuse to come in drunk!

Is religion the father of science

Is religious persecution the cause of the formal structure of the scientific method?

Is the fact that it was prohibited to talk about the final cause of reality and 'experiments' the clarifying condition that left us with a 'pure' scientific method?

The dynamics of human behavior, and the unpredictability of complex systems is rather fun. What this would mean, essentially, is that the dark ages cannot be viewed as a setback in humanity. The Renaissance, the scientific method and modern society as we know it, is irrevocably causally connected to this 'incubation' period for humanity and leads me to my definitions for good and evil.

Ideas worth spreading...

Tres ideas de TED me tienen cautivados con la posibilidad de emplearlas aquí:

• Energía termosolar. (Solar heat power).
• Selva tropical productiva en 4 años. (Productive Rain forests) (y esta me suena mejor para Haiti).
• La idea de poner academias de música en los barriys. (Music acadamies in the slums.)

Ah, y turismo de asistencia.

José Abreu’s wish

Este video es algo senchillamente asombroso; me llena de felicidad, honor y orgullo de ser humano. Nuestra capacidad de compasion y sentimiento es hermosa. Video de promosion" Pagina Web del Blog

Canciones por una de las orquestas:

Poema 62

Corazón, corazón flamante
  jamas me había topado con tu capacidad de querer
  que me llena, me quema
  ardes en mi, una llama cauterizadora
  y tu sonrisa es una llama radiante
  que brilla sobre esta otra
  sobre el duelo de amar

Modern Musical Composition

Modern musical composition is so erratic; just when you start to feel the groove of some tune, everything is changed... I guess this is a world where artistry is left to the ADD crowd... :( This is of course without trying to offend anyone; it could actually be a reflection of our modern, distraction flooded environment... In that sense, we are ALL subject to ADD

Mugged

So I was mugged last thursday... The damnedest thing, some kids tried to take my wallet

Definition - Balance

Balance: Of equality, or equilibrium between two contrary entities or forces.

Balance is a special case of equilibrium, which is a word used to describe more objects. Most people seek balance or equilibrium amongst the competing interests of their lives; it is regarded as the search for a state of inner peace and complete belonging.

Usually, people seem to feel they are under constant pressure away from balance, that their work/lives are regularly summited to events, accidents, duties that require them to stray from the center of certain personal balancing acts, this particular issue draws a physical analogy:
All, dynamic system, juggles and quickly strays from equilibrium. Although thermodynamics, states equilibrium is eventually inevitable, this juggling between inclinations is what permits actual work within the system.
So, actually, what moves individuals, societies, and life in general is the assurance or ability to do work between a useless chaos and a useless equilibrium.

With all this said; I would add it as an argument as to why the world has not flocked to be Tibetan Monks of harmony and equilibrium. Progress does not lie in pure chaos, nor in full equilibrium. It is found in optimizing our efficiency; because of this, we must never stop trying to obtain balance; and yet, obtaining it would be to our disadvantage.

What time perspective do you use?

What time perspective do you use for decision making?

Do you base your decisions solely on how your feeling at the moment?

Do you base your decisions simply on future plans?

This view prescribes an optimal time perspective from which to base your decisions and actions. Is he right? how do you use past experience, future predictions, and present circumstance to decide?

• Should I eat the apple now?
• Should I finish school?
• Should I leave him/her?
• Should I quit/take this job?

Any anecdotes you would like to share?

Can this be extended to societies? How are decisions made in your country?

Definition - Aloneness

Aloneness: of being alone; unaccompanied.

A feeling of being unconnected. Many times felt even while surrounded, arising from some misunderstanding, or incomprehension.

Curiously enough aloneness is a chosen sentiment; in a planet with billions of people, animals and plant life; feeling alone can only come from an individuals miss-adjustment to a surrounding he cannot / dare not change.

A Mathematician's Lament — an Indictment of US Math Education

Its something that always gets me wound up:

Scott Aaronson recently had "A Mathematician's Lament" [PDF], Paul Lockhardt's indictment of K-12 math education in the US, pointed out to him and takes some time to examine the finer points.

Life is indeed a gift.

Our senses bestow upon us a lasting appreciation for the whole of existence.
Whatever may be the case about time; its flow is a gift. Serendipitous, maybe, but a gift none the less.

Fortuitous surely; for LIFE in this universe is self building and self-justifying. All of life is tangled and built upon itself; in the mist of these surroundings it is little to say I am awed by these gifts.

This mountain view and silence is but an enduring reminder of our insignificance , freedom and spirituality.
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Definition - Contradiction

Interesting Word.
Its fun thinking: "uhm, what can I say about this word..." and then start having ideas bubble in ones brain! :D Mathematics has a way of molding your world view, and apparently, for me, this word has been completely taken over! hehe...

Contradiction: Self-negating; An argument or expression which concludes falsifying itself.

Contradictions are invaluable in the discovery of new truths; many famous contradictions are a critical part in the growth of knowledge and our understanding. In logic (mathematics) demonstration through contradiction is indeed one of the most powerful forms of proof! For example; a fables narates how a Greek named Hippasus drowned over a "proof through contradiction": most Pythagoreans thought there was no such thing as irrational numbers (as it went against their beliefs on the beauty of nature); so like all other numbers must indead be rational... except that this leads to a contradiction. As the story states, Hippasus must have noted this, apparently sharing the demonstration just before being told to go drown somewhere.

Contradictions are not paradoxes, and are neither undecidable nor incomplete; this is why philosopher's and mathematitians have found salvation and beauty in carrying out proofs through contradiction. The weight of this perspective can be condensed in the following quote by Ayn Rand: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." Thats exactly how we can demonstrate irrational numbers exist. Because of this; it was once assumed that mathematics was a self healing body of absolute knowledge we simply pearing into; Galileo stated: "Mathematics is the language through which God has written the universe".

So: contradictory as it seems, contradictions have been the source of truth, new realizations and a more secure untainted view of our reality.

Definition - Duality

It was fun thinking about this word; it kinda triggered thoughts about Batman, the quest for the Grand Unification Theory, and super moms!

Duality: Ability to fit two models.

To be both rational & spiritual; mother & lawyer, duality implies in these cases individuals capable of two seemingly disparate roles.

Another famous duality is that of light; in which it was found to behave as both a particle and a wave depending on how the experiment is setup (this duality is then beautifully enclosed in Schrödinger's wave function).

Duality is a basic form of versatility, although dual personalities are frowned upon; and "two faced" is not a nice thing to call someone. The problem appears in so far as the individual's versatility arrives in detriment to the rest of society.

Definition - Exception

This second word was picked because it sounded nice and was a central part of the movie: 'He's just not that into you'; oh joy!

Exception: a statistically improbable outcome.

The film (which is, by the way, lackluster and mind-numbing) uses it in reference to our psychological inability to work with extreme odds, a 5% chance never seems that much worse than a 15 or 10 percent odd of success, let alone our attempt to compare 1 in a million with 1 in a thousand.

Our simple minds, seem to keep things in more robust comparison buckets like: very rare, rare, infrequent, etc. If two events fall into the same category, we don't really care that much...

So hey, we're the exception, now kiss me you fool!

Definition - Maturity

I'm planning on starting a series of posts in which I'll simply write my personal definition for some words.. followed by some sort of quip.

Maybe this will be fun, lighthearted and profound?.. :D Any words requests you might have, or want to know what thoughts they trigger for me?

First experimental word:

Maturity: A complex landscape of peaks and valleys over the surface of social interaction. Said landscape is a function of net utility rendered to self and society over the area of all possible interaction scenarios.

Personality, foresight and past experience in general allow us to maximize said utility. The perceived mean height of this graph is more commonly used to call a person either mature or immature.

How is maturity related to play?!

Why are we more dishonest now?

Why are we more dishonest in the twentieth century, than the nineteenth?



Because we have oversimplified man's social behavior. Economist's models of the human mind, and the trickling of said model to the rest of our interactions have led to 'incentive systems' that override an older finer grained set of social cooperative regulators that have been genetically embedded in most of us.



This means that: 'Man as a rational beast will cheat or steal in so far as it is worth the risk'. Now thinks our elite, now think all of us. This simplification has been useful in laying a foundation for more elaborate treatise, theory and social-economic policies; but fortunately for us, the flaws are readily visible and as we continue to perfect our theories, these views are changing.



Behavioral economics, led by people like Dan Ariely (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI&feature=sdig&et=1243083222.49, http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/dishonesty.pdf) are working on fixing this, by bringing more accurate psychological models of human behavior into economic predictions and economic policy making.



So: books like Freakanomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics), as popular as they may be, still miss a very important point: It's not just about money!!!!

Sobre la muerte de Mario Benedetti

"La humanidad ha perdido alguien increíble"

Eso me parece estar al revés! El egoísmo detrás de eso. De querer sacarle más! De que quizás no lo hallamos aprovechado, de que en la humanidad hubo un talento, que nos pasó desapercibido, y ahora estamos arrepentidos de que no lo hallamos aprovechado!

Sabemos que la entropia siempre aumenta, y que las cosas mueren. Los insectos en dias, las personas en años, las familias en siglos, las civilizaciones en milenios, los planetas y las estrellas en un poco más.

Todo muere; hasta que resolvamos el famoso problema de la entropia, hasta el universo en sí esta condenado a fallecer. A mi entender: sucede que este mismo aspecto de la realidad (la segunda ley) nos provee con una dirección en el tiempo, una flecha constante que en esta realidad separa tan firmemente el futuro del pasado; la vida de la muerte.

Nos empuja a cambiar, a avanzar nuestras vidas; a sentir la firmeza de lo afianzado, de lo ya realizado. De lo que fue escrito; de nuestra historia, que me lleva a opinar que la muerte es tanto una bendición como la maldición que nuestro egoísmo e instintos nos sugieren.

Por eso quizás veo la muerte como un sello; a partir de este evento, todas las influencias del ente en cuestión son indirectas; y el ente a firmado todos sus hechos en el tapiz de la existencia.

Decir que se ha perdido algo cuando esta firma se establece me suena tan tonto, es un menosprecio de todo lo que SI hizo frente lo que hubiera quizás podido hacer a continuación o no.

Siempre debemos enfocar lo que SI fuera realizado y gozar de la continuación de esos hecho en el desencadenamiento de las mismas.

Que maravilla la existencia de Benedetti!
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Wolfram's Black Box: a biologist's take on Wolfram|Alpha

Alpha seems to me like an excellent preview of the future for human - machine augmentation... I agree with all the critics of the system right now; but a bigger view of things is needed to grasp the potential, soon we will be able to help ourselves to better understand some of the more complex concepts in nature, and be better human beings because of it. (For example, we still suck at grasping exponential growth, volume, etc... See my previous post: )

What are your opinions on Alpha?

http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/-inusvajtig/wolframs-black-box-a-biologists-take-on-wolframalpha.ars
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What To Do When a Megacorp Wants To Buy You?

En este artículo de Slashdot:
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/T6N-IoSIVfI/article.pl

Habla de vender una compañía pequeña; sin sentirse desmotivado, o abandonando un ideal...

Hubo un tiempo en que Trapezoid (una compañía americana) estuvo interesado en kindleit; sentí que era muy temprano para soltar las riendas del proyecto; que habían cosas que quería experimentar todavía, errores que me faltaban por cometer, y lecciones, retos y metas... No sé...

En realidad la propuesta de ser sub-contratados es una que yo encuentro ideal, y creo que me voy a acercar a ellos de nuevo, ahora que la estructura es otra. En especial para desarrollar aplicaciones financieras, también intentaré conseguir proyectos más divertidos y retadores.

Ayer, por segunda vez, un ex-empleado comenta que mi infraestructura no es verdaderamente singular; y realmente me cuestiono la validez de mis comentarios, yo por mi cuenta la considero un avance significativo a todo lo otro que he visto, la considero altamente flexible, cómoda, extensible y a prueba de errores; un entorno muy integrado y coordinado... No sé... Asumo que el simple hecho de que estén las mismas herramientas lo hace común y no valoran la integración realizada, ni la manera en que se consiguió la flexibilidad...

Aún así, me trae suma curiosidad, y me crean ansias de seguir el esfuerzo y avanzar la infraestructura...
Que es, para mí, quizás uno de los futuros productos de kindleit, y sirvamos de consultoría para ayudar a otros equipos de desarrollo...

Ya veremos, ya veremos...

:)
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Quiet Bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance

Dominican society is a mixture similar to the one patented by these scientists:

• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bacteria-antibiotic-resistance

No matter how much we remind each other of the uselessness and counter-productivity we can't help but lie cheat and steal

Karma, Revenge & Justice

Twice in the last few months I've heard someone ease the precarity of their situation by stating: "that's karma", as if they had just atoned for previous misdeeds with an unfortunate set of events in their present circumstance.

That's something I can readily understand, but subtly conceals issues similar to those of revenge. It is highly doubtful one individual can gauge the negative impact of an action, especially under emotional distress; while revenge is most assuredly a heated over-reaction, karma is an emotionally charged rationalization; a passive self-excusing correlation between unrelated accidents.

If revenge is justice for none, than karma is justice for one (the karma calculator)... a catch phrase of sorts, yes, but it at also points to the possible non-universality, not just non-objectivity, of justice.

Can justice be individually achieved?
What is justice?
What are your definitions?

Open Source Contribution

We (kindleit.net) currently released a maven plugin for working with google app engine.

• Maven Google AppEngine Plugin @ Google Code

I didn't know where else to post this, so, here goes! :D

How wrong is it to use a kitten for personal sexual pleasure? Depends on whether you've washed your hands

Interestingly enough, people make decisions based on all sorts of preconditions.

We know we take rational thought very seriously; but experiments continually show our decisions are influenced not only by logical reasoning, but also our emotional state.

And we all know our emotional state can be very subtly manipulated. The following post talks about our moral judgment and the impact of our being disgusted on said judgment.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/cognitivedaily/~3/nMPCZ0q2tUE/how_wrong_is_it_to_use_a_kitte.php

All this research on rational and moral thinking is to me deeply related to my thoughts on love. In my opinion, love is basically an emotional modifier to our rational thinking processes. It is a construed mechanism that is self affecting. I think a formula similar to a gravitational field could be a useful metaphor to understand how love rises from rational, circumstantial and other emotional factors to later mold and maintain the these very same factors into a self preserving, emergent behavior.

Love is beautiful indeed: a very delicate flower that can help us see the world in a different light!
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Are Human Beings Organisms Or Living Ecosystems?

Hugh Pickens writes "Every human body harbors about 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering human cells 10 to one. There's been a growing consensus among scientists that bacteria are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. 'Human beings are not really individuals; they're communities of organisms,' says microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai.

A ver, como logramos dejar de ser tan egoistas.
Me encanta la noción de que poco a poco iremos cambiando la manera en que pensamos. Y el ego vaya disminuyendo su influencia sobre nuestro pensar.

Me encanta aceptar que no somos el centro del sistema solar, ni de la galaxia, que hay muchos otros planetas como este, que el universo es un axidente, y que no hay un proposito predestinado para la existencia.

Verlo ahora en direccion inversa es igual de satisfactorio: no somos un cerebro racional y pensante, estamos afectados por hormonas y emociones, no somos fisicamente entidades únicas; nuestros cuerpos son una comunidad, cada celula es una fabrica que escoge que va a producir y tiene una copia completa de la comunidad.

Como leí una vez sobre los sistemas complejos: es perfectamente comprehensible que emergan sistemas complejos sobre otros sistemas. Con caracteristicas y cualidades que no se encuentran en el sistema base.

Asi somos, y nos consideramos quizas estar en el medio: que hay sistemas por arriba, y que hay sistemas por abajo. Pero no me sorprende que eventualmente conoscamos la magnitud de sistemas que hay por encima de nosotros. Lo pequeño que somos. Quien sabe...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/eoBKe-e6YOo/article.pl

From the human brain to selfishness

Cognitive Daily (http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/04/children_versus_apes_whos_bett.php) comenta sobre un estudio entre monos y niños de diferentes edades y su capacidad de predecir / interpretar el movimiento de objetos no visibles ...

Básicamente es la idea del famoso juego de 'peek-a-boo'... Los monos adultos se quedan por debajo del nivel de un niño de 3 años en esta tarea...

Es divertido confirmar la elasticidad y el avance de la construcción del cerebro humano, nuestra capacidad predictiva, asociativa y por ende de razocinio!

El como fuimos adquiriendo esta capacidad, y hacia donde vamos con ella, son dos temas separados; sobre los que no comentaré aquí. :)

Me iré por una tangente, y hablare sobre el egoísmo o altruismo de nuestras acciones...

Un amigo afirma que no existe acción humana que no es realizada fuera del egoísmo y argumenta con puntos basados en ideas similares a lo confirmado en el artículo anterior para asignarle la búsqueda de beneficios ocultos a actos que de otra manera parecieran altruistas.

El afirma que la motivación es siempre básica y que solo a veces la manera en que se puede encontrar el beneficio obtenido final es lo que se complica.

En fin, el no cree que exista realmente una distinción entre el egoísmo y el altruismo; según él, las acciones son siempre hacia un beneficio personal, ya sea directa o indirectamente.

Yo encuentro un solo error en todo el argumento: la afirmación 'la motivación es siempre básica' no esta sustentada en ninguna otra parte del argumento y es esencial para su conclusión. El comienza con lo que quiere demostrar; lo cual es un problema.

A ver, como nuestro don de la razón nos permite tomar decisiones altruistas? Que opinan? Y que tiene que ver la humildad con el altruismo?
Sent via BlackBerry® device.

Last Post Explanation

No, my account was not hacked; well unless you account for my mother, who uses blogger to post homework assignments. :D

To be safe, I'll change every password, thank you for the comments! :D

Que hubo con la vida, la muerte, la reencarnación y la resucitacón

(11:15:54 AM) hobbes: la vida es muy grata, es un tanto corta, pero da oportunidad pacer hacer bastante si uno se lo propone.
(11:16:39 AM) hobbes: la muerte llega pronto y es el mayor recordatorio de que en este universo la entropia solo aumenta.
(11:17:09 AM) hobbes: la reencarnacion es una idea muy divertida y una buena muestra de la capacidad inventiva humana.
(11:17:38 AM) hobbes: nuestro amor a la vida, el arte y un en algunos casos un aparente miedo a la muerte.
(11:18:37 AM) hobbes: la resucitación es para las personas un poco menos humilde que entiende que merecen conservar no solo el espíritu, sino su cuerpo tambien.

Not objective at all, but hey.. a little bit of fun in any case.

ted, artistas y la inspiración divina.

Las últimas veces que he escrito algo ha sido de nuevo por alguna inspiraciön artística. O por una mtoviación espiritual.

Y quisas, por la racionalodad de mi espiritú, de mis sentimientos (al parecer esto es posible, de hecho; me creo buen ejemplo) mi místicismo es a veces numérico o factual. Recibir inspiración espiritual del número 42, o la sengunda ley de la termodinámica tengo que admitir que incluso a mi me parece un tanto Extrañoo (aunque para nada conplicado) y ver la charla de una escritora en TED comentar sobre lo saludable de querer pasar una parte de la responsabilidad del proceso creativo humano de nuevo a algún especie de energía antropomorfa, a pesar de los beneficios que ella propone, un poco retrogrado.

Aún así, me deja pensando sobre la fragilidad del ser humano, y creo encontrar mi solución en algo por las venas de como opino sobre la muerte; nosotros como individuos no debemos sentirnos demasiado importantes, la vida; o el flujo causal de las cosas se extiende por mucho más que una o mil o millones de vidas; y realmente las mentes individuales no deben considerarse fuente singular de ninguna idea, obra o asaña. Cada quien es catalizador de su herencia, tanto genética como social y del entorno en que les tocó vivir; y más que sentirse genios o divinamente inspirados serìa sentirse afortunados de poder con su arduo trabajo y esfuerzo poder servir de catalizador y condensar nuevas nociones para su respectivo presente en el flujo de la enormidad que es la naturaleza, el universo y la vida.

best thing to say when your moody or down

no te quiero triste, :(
te quiero contento
te quiero enamorado y sonriendo
te quiero volando y soñador
besando y pensador
poeta de versos dulces
de pensamientos encantadores
y de abrazo libres
te quiero...
te adoro...

Paul Sereno: What can fossils teach us?

Self-perception is key! Wow... and you see this all throughout human interaction! You can only be as good as you see yourself to be!
If you have low self-esteem, or you feel lacking in some respects, whether or not you can actually do something because irrelevant, you started yourself out with a handicap.

You have to SEE yourself as such! If you can't, if you don't want to see yourself that way or if you don't believe in yourself: You won't!

I would publicly confess, I've tried to teach that to a couple of people I've known... But, I guess it can be very hard sometimes.... Living is such a fun challenge.

Scott McCloud: Understanding comics

Le Wow!

Peter Reinhart: The art of baking bread

I simply loved the four ways to understand something. Oh god, we are such a dynamic species. Oh, there's even a mystical understanding towards bread baking. There are mystical interpretations to everything we do, isn't there.. :P even numbers: 7, 13, 21, 42, PI, PHI, E, I. The stars, the sky, the moon. It's all about mystically growing, and expanding ourselves. Cross references and cross pollination of thought. We are such a beautiful species.

Happiness depends on Freedom

A friend commented on a discussion she had with another friend whether or not freedom was a precondition towards happiness.

She commented on some points of the debate, and we then proceeded to have two other debates on the same subject, in which many opinions from different were presented.

Curiously enough, we all agreed that yes, it seems freedom is indeed required for happiness, at least the our species.

I'll sum up my own opinion, feel free to comment:

1. The human species, through evolutionary accident, developed an innate curiosity and 'un-satisfaction' that requires us to take action.
2. Freedom is the ability to successfully satisfy this "instinct"
3. The level to which we must explore, move about or act in order to satisfy "freedom" is genetically variable between humans, as well as there is evidence that it is physically extirpable, as seen with certain brain traumas
4. And, although the very same brain is moldable or educatable with societal requirements and actions are indeed individually interpreted though culture, the inability to satisfy the underlying physical instinct to explore does cause anxiety, and eventually unhappiness

TED: Steven Strogatz - sync up

He hints at spontaneous self-organization as an underlying force (although I prefer salient feature) of nature, at all scales. To me: that force, or salient feature that can be evidenced in the laws we have devised to describe nature is actually a more appropriate definition of Life. I think I've written about that before, but the examples in this video are a very good example of the motivation behind these ideas. He doesn't present this spontaneous organization in more abnormal time scales o sizes, but it is there.

The Bigtime. hobbes-log made 30 cents in one month!

It seems that during the month of december, hobbes-log recieved a bit less than 6,000 visits! none where about the amazing content to be read here though... The average visitor spends about 30 seconds here... and then never comes back! :D

Although it seems most visitors come to see geek tattoos, 1,066 people actually visited the main page before they abandon all hope to return.. :P It seems it's time to redesign the site layout! :D

Pantera & Youth

Would you look at me now?
Can you tell I'm a man?
Becoming!...
God Size!

Those songs seem to have been heard ages ago (well, it has been a decade, but who's counting :P)... Was I really angry back then? What war was I fighting? Is it over? ("He as hollow as I alone"...)

I hadn't realized Pantera's lyrics where so suicide related... weird... I remember my teens as wanting to blow out, remove the shackles of my shyness and insecurities, I don't think I actually felt depressed, more like repressed and misunderstood.

I guess you still like those old songs because they allow you access to old memories, it seems its fun to remember! :p