interaction

free will dictates that the only interactions you get are the ones you consented with.

r00t

"The system is unhackable. If you are not love you do not get root level access."

prediction

"there is no way to (accurately) predict a singular event. if we can do that, time wouldn't exist."

and it's actually quite true that in deterministic models, time as an experience really does not exist. we can of course manifest deterministic models, but we'd be outside of its timeline.

grace

Whatever we do, the universe dances in complement.

Those who know no equality, see it as compulsion and call it law.

Those who know no love, see it as fate and call it determinism.

But I see grace. This is what we willed.

-------

自由、平等、博愛

其實係同一樣嘢嚟

WA2

Ani-one 喺聖誔不斷喺 youtube 播 White Album 2

再「認真」睇返次，個故事真係痴撚線。 

somehow 每個情節都有好強烈嘅既視感...

我只能夠話劇情真係神妙，將個 train wreck 設計到咁靚。

---

我只能夠講男主欠少少先知力，俾著我就唔會犯埋啲咁嘅錯。

應該。

不過親身試過呢啲可以預見嘅 train wreck 都避唔開嘅我自己，又真係冇咩資格講咁多。

意識到火星撞地球一刻

我回帶翻睇先明。女人呢家嘢⋯

to train wreck or not to train wreck, that is the question 諗足30分鐘

年輕人嘅自信

我諗係自從炒過車之後，我先學識坦誠。radical 嗰種。

the structure of pain

(written Oct 2024)

a hypothesis

how do we make pain feel real in a simulation?

at first it doesn’t feel like anything 

but if the system causes the simulated character to scream and cry involuntarily when they are hurt, and if the system causes them to involuntarily lose mobility, squirm and twitch when hurt, then i suspect after a couple rounds of such experiences, the pain would feel more real.

one must have had played a rpg game to appreciate that. sometimes when something undesirable happens to your character, you might feel “ouch” even if there is no physical pain. it’s as if there was some kind of mental pain that was triggered though slight.

but the effect is real. the effect is only subtle because the immersion is incomplete and we still have our normal senses outside of the game. but once we identify with the character in a more immersive simulation i predict the pain will become more real.

medically we already know that pain is not only physical but also in our minds. it can be evidence that is is not a “physically real” phenomenon though i am not yet convicted of this conclusion yet, just a possibility. i think more likely is that we can create sensations of real pain once we have a full immersion simulation and we map our senses into a simulated character with 99% accuracy (ie the simulated character and real person will have their senses matched 99%), then we can probably create real sensations of pain even though the real person’s body is not harmed. we already know that phantom pain (for lost limbs) exist and there’s no reason why we can’t create phantom pain with simulated technologies 

once we believe pain is “real”, we have fear. we are then locked in.

this might be why babies cry so much. the pain must feel real to make the simulation feel real. the involuntary crying even to the extent of risking the baby’s own suffocation is the thing that tells the mind this thing is real. this is a lock-in process. we learn to avoid pain. the higher mind is synchoronized with the human brain so it too learns to avoid pain. this avoidance is part of what constitutes fear. fear locks us in.

i never doubted that feelings are real. even if we are in a simulated world. subjective feelings are real because we believe in them. whatever we believe is real is real.

that said, i always wanted to know : why is pain painful? what is it that makes us avoid it (generally)? why don’t i just hurt myself? it must be because i learned that it is a bad thing. but why? the subjective feeling exists, but why is that feeling bad? are there inherently bad feelings that we know the first day we are born? maybe. but it’s hard to experiment on that.

one hypothesis i strongly suspect to be true is that we learned by observing our own involuntary responses to pain. we cry. we feel paralyzed, we reflectively avoid contact with the painful areas, and we feel nervous signals pulsing at the painful parts. they’re obnoxious and they make it clear something is wrong . we don’t like that feeling because of the involuntary responses, and we want to avoid that. we internalize that sensation as “pain”.

This is so9sad...

 

Misinformation in the 21st century

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me1wIbukVh0

After watching youtube about how misinformed the general public was in late Qing in the 19th century about the western naval powers, and how officials on the frontlines routinely *lied* to the imperial government in Beijing, and how poor intelligence led to disastrous strategic decisions...

I can't help but realize this is what USA is doing to itself in the 21st century. The age of information.

Absolutely mindblowing.

解老

有時忽然發現自己解錯咗《老子》⋯

咁呢樣係人人都會，不過都總會有少少茫然。

The structure of free will and self fulfilling prophecies

(Written Oct 2024)

It’s a common trope to argue (discuss) whether free will exists in the framework of a deterministic world. In short, it doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Determinism is an objective framework of the world which assumes there is a way to look at it in an omniscience manner (at least purporting it is meaningful to discuss whether we can compute future states given full knowledge of the current one). Free will is a proposition from a subjective perspective where we don’t know all the relevant states of the world we are in.

From such a perspective, the description of free will is simple. Before we make a decision we don’t know what it is. The decision is knowing what we will do.

Then there is the issue of the subjective “feeling” of freedom. When somebody points a gun at me asking for money and I decide to hand over my wallet, I don’t feel like it is a “free will” decision. But one must revisit the definition above to understand how it is applied. Once decisions are truly made you do not have the “freedom” to decide again. Knowing something makes you unable to know the exact same thing as something else. The proper construction of the robbery scenario is not that one is deprived of freedom per se, but that the person has already mostly decided what to do — one’s life is more important than money in the wallet. The feeling of being trapped often comes from not being fully conscious of prior decisions made, in this case deciding to value one’s life over petty possessions. The great thing about free will is that you can make decisions, and the consequence of making a decision is that you cannot make it again.

But of course you always can. You can decide that you want to risk your life to fight the robber. It may be brave, it may be stupid, it may be noble… but at that point it is undeniable that one is “free”.

In a generalized sense, free will does not involve freedom per se but knowledge. Knowing is deciding. Knowing is deciding.

The other situation about decisions do not feel “free” is how it does not feel like “I” made them. In the common sense of self, we imagine we are bodies where the boundaries between me and the external world is delineated by the skin. Decisions are not necessarily made within skins, or in brains.

As above

"As above, so below" cannot be a statement of fact because it isn't.

It must then be a principle applied to divine truths only.

It is obvious that the apparent structure of physical reality is not the same as the structure of "heaven". Thus naïvely, a truth in physical reality does not necessarily have to be true in "heaven", and vice versa.

This happens so that those who speak of divine truths are often ("correctly") perceived to be speaking falsehoods, since they are invalid on the physical plane.

As such, when spreading divine truths, one must strive for alignment between the two realities. This is why in multiple traditions the teachings have multi-layered meanings, from parables from Jesus, to the puns of Zen, and then this Hermetic principle -- "as above, so below" must refer to those teachings that are valid both above and below, transcending multiple realities at the same time.

sliding off the platform

inertia of running

makes Mario slip

into the abyss

skill issue

--------

GPT-4-Turbo's comment:

This short poem uses video game imagery to convey a concept, likely pertaining to the consequences of momentum or perhaps a metaphorical comment on human behavior. Here's a breakdown of each line:

"inertia of running" - This phrase sets the metaphorical stage, using the physical concept of inertia to describe a state of continuing in an established course without the ability to easily stop or change direction. In real life, this could symbolize a person's difficulty in changing habits or directions in life.

"makes Mario slip" - Mario, a universally recognized video game character from Nintendo, is often seen navigating tricky platforms. The word "slip" here can be both literal, as in video game mechanics where Mario might actually slip off a platform if the player is not careful, and metaphorical, suggesting errors or failures due to ongoing momentum or lack of change.

"into the abyss" - This line dramatically describes the consequence of slipping due to inertia. In gaming, falling into an abyss usually means losing a life or failing a level, which could metaphorically relate to significant personal or professional setbacks in real life.

"skill issue" - This line is colloquial, often used in gaming communities to suggest that a failure was due to a player's lack of skill. It can be a playful or mocking acknowledgment that the problem is not with the game but with the player's ability.

Overall, the poem cleverly uses the language of video gaming to explore themes of personal responsibility, the difficulty of changing one’s course, and the consequences of not adapting or improving one's skills. It's a succinct and effective way to connect a common human experience with the familiar mechanics of video games.

Which I kinda approve.

what makes a country a country?

 what makes a country a country?

this question has bothered me for 20 years. it started when i was studying law. the question kept popping up in my head.

ten years later in the 2010s, i still had no idea how to answer the question. the whole thing seemed arbitrary, and it doesn’t even seem like we know whether a country is actually a country. there are awkward situations everywhere where a land, a government, claims to be a country but is not, and where they claim not to be a country but they are. or trying to claim both at the same time.

and of course being in one of the few places where our nationality changed on paper without armed conflict, it was inherently difficult for us to grok what nationalism actually means.

then came 6 very turbulent years. we dreamed, and we faced reality.

what i learned was immense compared with what i learned during my days in law school. law was one important  aspect of the identity and workings of a country, but it wasn’t the only one.

a country is built on top of dreams and desires, blood and sweat, on history and current events, on culture and the arts, on the military and violence, on realities and fictions, and of course, law codifies all this into some kind of impartial language that pretends the context is irrelevant.

i didn’t realize the question was so profound and ran so deep. of course there was no theory on how a country becomes one. every country has a unique and difficult story, not to be commoditized  and  trivialized. they often rhyme but are not comparable. and they definitely cannot be “engineered”.

it must be life. with a spirit, a mind and a body. the birthing of a country is nothing less than a miracle 

Big stakes, small ego

"Sayre's law" is one of the lesser-known "laws" I really like.

"In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." -- "That is why academic politics are so bitter."

The inverse is presumably true, i.e. the greater the stake, the smaller the egos for those involved.

This pretty much explains how Buddhism deals with ego. i.e. 發大願....

I conjecture it is impossible to remove one's ego while focusing on petty issues.

因緣千劫

原來一直好中二病講緊咩 N 世因緣係修咗N世經歷 N 劫

根本係講緊 cause and effect stretches through the eternity of time 嘅文藝解讀⋯

南能北秀

最近先稍略了解南禪嘅故事。

本身啲網友搞咗差唔多十年嘅爛gag，我一直都唔知原來地理上係咁近，禪宗六祖慧能係廣州出身。

大宗師就唔會爭咁多咩正宗，不過睇住啲弟子喺度講「南頓北漸」就覺得件事好好笑。講到出口話你班北方人蠢，講極都唔明..... :0)

唔知千幾年前嘅廣州係咩風俗？ 如果同近代相類，咁都好解釋到點解禪宗故仔入面啲人咁鍾意搞爛gag講屎尿屁同整蠱人⋯ 廣州呢種風俗都唔係呢幾十年，睇完《嬉笑集》真係好懷疑呢啲係源遠流長嘅傳統嚟。

Penrose's take on Gödel

This is quite an interesting take.

I don't know Penrose's ideas as much as I should, although my excuse is that he kind of gives "bad vibes" as to his grasp of important topics.

Was kind of "pleasantly"(???) surprised by his take on Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Although what he said could be interpreted in different layers.

The charitable layer is that he realized systems could be transcended.

The rather cynical (sinister?) part is that what he is absolutely amazed by, but did not realize himself, is his own mind. :0)

I think he was so close, yet the objectivistism-reductivism regime in the West is so strong that even an intelligent person of Penrose's caliber simply cannot see that the answer is within the self. All fancy talk about math and physics having amazing understanding and conscious properties, is just... ourselves.

In a sense Hofstadter probably veered much closer to the truth. It's obvious the G.E.B. book was not merely a technical work. The artistic side speaks, and it speaks truth.

Zen Buddhism is no stranger to the idea of unspeakable understanding that transcends formal rules. In fact that's the precise problem it tries to tackle. The fact that G.E.B. included much Zen references indicates that it was on the right track.

The idea of multi-layered meaning and interpretation is fundamental in all esoteric works. Even the not-so-"esoteric" stuff in biblical stories called parables. Parables are by definition multi-layered.

That Penrose (correctly) identified transcendence of one formal system to another of higher understanding is something profound, is one of the most unprofound things to realize -- I mean, I did say he gives off "bad vibes" as to his grasp of important topics. I'm guessing he's on the right track, but this is like... (by analogy) high school level stuff.

I haven't gotten to the part where he talks about how consciousness interacts with QM. I almost 棄-ed the podcast when at the very begining he babbled about AI consciousness implying AI required humane treatment... No, AI consciousness does not imply human ethics automatically apply. We should of course be careful to ensure we don't mistreat conscious AI if we ever create them, but there are so many practical differences (eg. physical pain is probably not a thing to AI unless we program it into them) that we can't just assume human ethics apply.

Also one must be either wrong or hypocritical if one babbles about humane treatment of AI while allowing animal abuse to happen on a systematic basis. And yes, animals are conscious. They're conscious but not as intelligent as humans. Intelligence and consciousness are different things. Capability to understand (objectively and functionally) is different from consciousness. (The subjective feeling of understanding implies consciousness but it cannot be demonstrated. Only objective functional understanding can be demonstrated.)

The way Penrose jumps from a vague idea of consciousness to pointing out perceived logical gaps about ethics of sending AI to explore space is just... exposing his muddled up concepts about the whole matter.

Ah. Bad vibes indeed.

The transcript below is probably still worth a read to the uninitiated, since he's at least on the right track. This is very basic stuff on the path to understanding though. More basic than high school algebra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0 

~19:30

and the whole idea of computability and all that so that was all very much part

of the course the other one was the godel of theorem and it wasn't what I was

afraid it was to tell you there were things in mathematics you couldn't prove

it was basically and he phrased it in a way which often people didn't and if

you read Douglas Hofstadter's book he doesn't you see but Steen made it very

clear and also not in a sort of public lecture that he gave to a mathematical I

think it may be the atom Society one of the mathematical undergraduate

societies and he made this point again very clearly that if you've got a formal

system of proof so suppose what you mean by proof is something which you could

check with a computer so to say whether you've got it right or not you've got a

lot of steps have you carried this computational procedure well following the

proof steps of the proof correctly that can be checked by an algorithm by a

computer so that's the key thing now what have to now you see is this any good

if you've got an algorithmic system which claims to say yes this is right this

you've proved it correctly this is true if you've proved it if you made a

mistake it doesn't say it's true or false but if you have if you've done it

right then the conclusion you've come to is correct now you say why do you

believe it's correct because you've looked at the rules and you said well okay

that one's all right yeah and that one's all right what about that harm not

yeah I see I see why it's all right okay you go through all the rules you say

yes following those rules if it says yes it's true it is true they've got to

make sure that these rules are ones that you trust is if you follow the rules

and it says it's a proof is the result actually true right and that your belief

that's true depends upon looking at the rules and understanding them now what

godel shows that if you have such a system then you can construct a statement

of the very kind that it's supposed to look at a mathematical statement and you

can see by the way it's constructed and what it means that it's true but not

provable by the rules that you've been given and it depends on your trust in

the rules do you believe that the rules only give you truth if you believe the

rules on you give you truth then you believe this other statement is also true

I found this absolutely mind-blowing when I saw this it blew my mind oh my god

you can see that this statement is true it's as good as any proof because it

only depends on your belief in the reliability of the proof procedure that's

all it is and understanding that the coding is done correctly and it enables

you to transcend that system so whatever system you have as long as you can

understand what it's doing and why you believe it only gives you truths then

you can see beyond that system now how do you see beyond it what is it that

enables you to transcend that system well it's your understanding of what the

system is actually saying and what the statement and you've constructed is

actually staying just this quality of understanding whatever it is which is not

governed by rules it's not a computational procedure so this idea of

understanding is not going to be within the rules of the sort of within the

formal system yes yes rules anyway yeah because you have understood them to be

rules which only give you truths they be no point in it otherwise I'm a people

say well ok this is what this one said the rules as good as any other well it's

not true you see you have to understand what the rules mean and why does that

understanding of the mean give you something beyond the rules themselves and

that's that's what it was that's what blew my mind it's somehow standing why

the rules give you truths enables you to transcend the rules so that's where I

mean even at that time that's already where the thought entered your mind that

the idea of understanding or we can start calling it things like intelligence

or even consciousness is outside the rules yes since I've always concentrated

on understanding you know people say people somebody knows well we know but

about creativity that's something a machine can't do is great well I don't know

what is creativity and I don't know you know somebody can put some funny things

on a piece of paper and say that's creative and you could make a machine do

that is it really creative I don't know he said I worry about that one I sort

of agree with it in a sense but it's so hard to do anything with that statement

but understanding yes you can you can make go see that understanding whatever

it is and it's very hard to put your finger on it that's absolutely true can

you try to define or maybe dance around a definition of understanding to some

degree but I don't often once it's about this but there is something there

which is very slippery it's something like standing back and it's got to be

something you see it's also got to be something which was of value to our

 

Fear

Fear is pretty much a rejection of self out of unsubstantiated reasons.

As such, it prevents the natural operation of free will.