鹽稅 vs MSG

早幾日睇本書講中國開始用辣椒係同鹽稅有關

沿海地區少用辣椒，應該都係有啲 correlation。或者係海邊易得到私鹽，又或者普遍有錢啲。

然後我就諗起，中國古代最偉大發明：醬油。

好明顯都係鹽稅迫出嚟。大家都知道醬油含有豐富 amino acids 包括 glutamic acid / glutamates，即係 MSG。MSG 係可以用少啲鹽整出同等嘅美味，所以用醬油煮嘢食係可以用少啲鹽。

話說鹽稅好似係中國比較長期固有嘅稅項，其他地區好似冇咁耐嘅傳統。所以就咁。

Karma-Momentum

I understand "karma" (業力) as some form of cosmic momentum. It is a force that can be reversed, but requires a force in the opposite direction to nullify. If it is not acted upon by another force, then things continue on its karmic trajectory, where vectors are essentially multiplied.

This is basic stuff (just described in a frankenstein language)

But what if we could apply the uncertainty principle?

Application of the position-momentum effects of the uncertainty principle would be interesting.

I still can't figure out how this could be applied, not sure even the "position" should be interpretted as a physical position. But it sounds interesting as heck.

Agnostic-Gnostic

Is god knowable? Does god even exist?

This is actually a very tough question.

But not for the reasons you think.

Recall that the agnostics posit that the existence of god is unknown or unknowable, and we fundamentally cannot find reasons to believe or disbelieve it exists.

This is the position I held for a long time. Until I was introduced to the world of mysticism and magic, of metaphysics and matrix glitches.

And curiously, after thoroughly(?) immersing myself in such world, I am still arguably an agnostic.

Here's why.

<The knowing>

This is the basic principle of everything: whatever you believe is true is true.

The concept of "gnosis" is supposed to be the same as "knowledge", but in the modern world "knowledge" is often misunderstood to be "justified true belief". In "gnosis", belief is implicitly true (see principle above), so while the inclusion of "true" in the definition of "knowledge" is misguided, it is not wrong. The issue is "justification". There is a fundamental tension between justification (which requires other people to also take part in the belief, or at least the components that comprises the belief) and truth. And of course if we pit "justification" against "truth", truth must win.

This is basic common sense in the world of mysticism. For example, when we intuit something yet unknown to society at large, we often cannot explain *why* we know it to be so. The knowledge does not come from rational reasoning, but rather a calm and confident knowing. This may sound crazy to those who have never relied on their intuitive senses, but this is absolutely real (to us).

Intuitive knowledge is solid, but subtle. It can easily be masked by emotions such as fear (greed is a form of fear). The fear of lack, so pervasive in our society, takes away people's innate ability to intuit. You cannot form intuitive knowledge if you *badly want* something to be true, because the only reason you *badly* want it is that deep down you know it is not true. Even the usual kind of “wanting” falls foul of this issue, but time and perseverance can very often bridge this relatively minor gap.

Intuitive knowledge happens when you know something is already true, without a doubt, right here, right now. So of course, it can be difficult to imagine it being some other way.

This is how magic and miracles are done. But even greater miracles work to form our world, this world we are living in, and it leaves not a single trace. Because such great truths must have been always eternally true, and we cannot imagine otherwise.

<The freedom>

A choice is made at the moment a person knows what they will do. Before a choice is made, the person does not know.

This "ignorance" is of the most wonderful kind. Because the gift of free will is the gift of not (fully) knowing.

Here lies the tension between gnosis and agnosis.

We know. Because we have relied on our intuitions and they are often correct.

Yet we fundamentally do not know. Our free will allows us to change our minds. We can change our minds about anything. About absolutely everything. Do not think the domain of "our decisions" is limited to the brain or the body. Note that the mechanism for choice is to know something that was previously unknown. It is not inherently a physical process. Because knowing is not a physical process (see above).

<The I am>

Because everything you believe is true is true, god is in the believing, which is the knowing. Yet we do not fully know, because we can always change our minds.

Is this agnosticism? Or is this some form of gnosis?

Do we know god?

I think it must be both.

asdf

有先知力喎

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOfb-TvhLfI 

理

 理不可服人，只可服眾

以理說人，令其孤立於世

唯心傳心，方可通達

Correlation between identity politics and general intelligence

I'm sufficiently bothered by these thoughts and felt I had to put them down in writing.

The reason why there is a correlation between actively engaging in identity politics and general intelligence is because the participation in identity politics reveals a general inability to tease out subtle true causes of undesirable outcomes and a tendency to misattribute it to some other apparent factor that is somewhat correlated but ultimately not a real cause.

Take this for example.

It is quite obvious nobody is hired for their skin color alone. It is an insufficient cause. The existence of poor white men is proof. A more robust hypothesis is that in the vast majority of these cases, the so called "mediocre white men" are hired because of nepotism by people of similar backgrounds who do hold positions of power.

Mis-attributing the problem of nepotism for racism is of course a problem, and solutions to fix each respective social problem are different. But this is beyond the scope of this article.

But people who routinely mis-attribute various problems for discrimination of gender, race and sexual preferences are precisely those people who fail to rationally discover more robust explanations of undesirable phenomena seen in the world around us. Which of course is highly correlated to their general intelligence.  These misattributed causes have simple explanations of why bad things happen in the world -- the simplicity is alluring to people who prefer to avoid complicated models, except that they're often disastrously wrong.

格物致知

 ACIM L28

"You could, in fact, gain vision from just that table, if you would withdraw all your own ideas from it, and look upon it with a completely open mind. It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full of happiness and hope. Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, the purpose it shares with all the universe.

In using the table as a subject for applying the idea for today, you are therefore really asking to see the purpose of the universe."

王陽明話格竹格唔撚到，我一直都存疑。明明我格《涼宮春日》嘅「漫無止境八月」都格到至理出嚟，格竹點會冇用？ 格竹無果，主要係中二病未除，心有所急，效力未見。何況悟道在恍忽之間，去到勞心勞力嘅話就即係緣份未到，不妨再等下次機會。