Everyone needs some help every once in a while. Through the trying year, I've had a lot of people there to help me. I stay in contact with almost all of these people, but there is one I don't. Last time Rodney and I spoke, I gave him a business card and he said he just might check on me later down the line. This post is just for him.
I've gotten past a great many obstacles both internal and external since I spoke to him. With the help of those close to me, I have made great strides in improving my life, my future, and more importantly my outlook. I've gotten past the mistakes I made which were holding me back. With this taken care of, I can now focus on employment and in turn proper health care. I have decided not to look for another career and am instead looking for a simple job so I can work on my education. It will be a few more months, but I am on track to begin classes next spring or summer.
All this may seem cryptic, but I hope it makes sense if Rodney sees it. I look forward to hearing from you if you do indeed check on me. Thanks for the help, it has done a lot to help push me out of the rut I was in and get me back on track.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Motivation
Everyone has something to help drive them. It isn’t always easy to figure out what keeps you going. In fact, I’d venture to say that most people spend a great deal of their life looking for it. There always seems to be a great deal of difficulty in deciding what “it” is. Even worse is the likelihood that a person won’t even realize they have something driving them and will pass right over it looking for the next thing that catches their fancy.
So far in my life I’ve come across three primary motivators that I feel push me. These three prime motivators could even be said to have kept me alive. In no particular order; I’d say love, music, and curiosity keep me going.
Love is probably the most obvious motivator many of us feel. It is also often the first motivator we experience growing up. No matter your relationship with your family, everyone had someone love them at some point. It’s human nature to foster relationships and one of many things that make us a social species. Wherever love comes from, it always pushes us in some way.
Of my three motivators, I imagine music is the least universal. Music can be many things to many different people. It can evoke emotion or thought like almost nothing else humanity has produced. I was lucky to grow up in a family that appreciated a wide variety of musical styles. I was even luckier in the fact that I had the opportunity to study it for years as an adolescent. For me, the discovery of the endless possibilities music holds will always be intimately tied to my younger (and more troublesome) years.
The last on my list, curiosity, is yet another common motivator for much of humanity. We are never satisfied with what we know or have experienced. There is always another frontier to look towards. Until we know everything there is to know, you can be sure someone is curious about something. (Although, at that point I imagine someone will at least be curious of what it would be like to not know everything.)
For me, these three motivators are tied together and in a way not all that different from each other. As much as we attempt to break down any of these three topics and study them in a scientific manner, we don’t understand them. Curiosity is why science exists in the first place. People are only now trying to scientifically understand why music speaks to us the way it does. When it comes to love, I’m sure anyone who has experienced it can tell you they don’t understand it.
One of the most peculiar things about love is that you can’t really love someone without hating them. That dislike or hate you feel for someone you love shows that you care. You could even argue that generalized hate about someone you don’t care about is you caring for humanity or life in its entirety. I still don’t understand why my family has to worry about me the way they do. I just chalk it up to their love for me.
As for music, I believe it might be a higher form of communication than language or writing. Different methods of received communication affect our thoughts in different ways. When we read text, it affects us differently than when conveyed through language. I don’t know about you, but music can affect me on a much deeper level than any other form. I have no idea why or how, but I’m convinced there is more going on than we understand.
Curiosity changes as generations “master” more and more knowledge. Once a generation feels it understands something, many people push the envelope even further. There aren’t a whole lot of people still working on expanding human knowledge on the topic of buoyancy, for instance. We have a general understanding of it so while there is likely more to learn about it, it is probably more worthwhile spending time and effort in understanding more pressing matters at the heart of human curiosity.
Simply put, you could say my prime motivation is my drive for understanding. It isn’t easy to work out why you do the things you do though it can be a useful personal exercise to try. It seems to be even more difficult to understand them, but then if we understood, we wouldn’t be as driven as we are to move forward. The day we understand everything is the day we stand still.
So far in my life I’ve come across three primary motivators that I feel push me. These three prime motivators could even be said to have kept me alive. In no particular order; I’d say love, music, and curiosity keep me going.
Love is probably the most obvious motivator many of us feel. It is also often the first motivator we experience growing up. No matter your relationship with your family, everyone had someone love them at some point. It’s human nature to foster relationships and one of many things that make us a social species. Wherever love comes from, it always pushes us in some way.
Of my three motivators, I imagine music is the least universal. Music can be many things to many different people. It can evoke emotion or thought like almost nothing else humanity has produced. I was lucky to grow up in a family that appreciated a wide variety of musical styles. I was even luckier in the fact that I had the opportunity to study it for years as an adolescent. For me, the discovery of the endless possibilities music holds will always be intimately tied to my younger (and more troublesome) years.
The last on my list, curiosity, is yet another common motivator for much of humanity. We are never satisfied with what we know or have experienced. There is always another frontier to look towards. Until we know everything there is to know, you can be sure someone is curious about something. (Although, at that point I imagine someone will at least be curious of what it would be like to not know everything.)
For me, these three motivators are tied together and in a way not all that different from each other. As much as we attempt to break down any of these three topics and study them in a scientific manner, we don’t understand them. Curiosity is why science exists in the first place. People are only now trying to scientifically understand why music speaks to us the way it does. When it comes to love, I’m sure anyone who has experienced it can tell you they don’t understand it.
One of the most peculiar things about love is that you can’t really love someone without hating them. That dislike or hate you feel for someone you love shows that you care. You could even argue that generalized hate about someone you don’t care about is you caring for humanity or life in its entirety. I still don’t understand why my family has to worry about me the way they do. I just chalk it up to their love for me.
As for music, I believe it might be a higher form of communication than language or writing. Different methods of received communication affect our thoughts in different ways. When we read text, it affects us differently than when conveyed through language. I don’t know about you, but music can affect me on a much deeper level than any other form. I have no idea why or how, but I’m convinced there is more going on than we understand.
Curiosity changes as generations “master” more and more knowledge. Once a generation feels it understands something, many people push the envelope even further. There aren’t a whole lot of people still working on expanding human knowledge on the topic of buoyancy, for instance. We have a general understanding of it so while there is likely more to learn about it, it is probably more worthwhile spending time and effort in understanding more pressing matters at the heart of human curiosity.
Simply put, you could say my prime motivation is my drive for understanding. It isn’t easy to work out why you do the things you do though it can be a useful personal exercise to try. It seems to be even more difficult to understand them, but then if we understood, we wouldn’t be as driven as we are to move forward. The day we understand everything is the day we stand still.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Regarding the Technological Singularity
It occurs rather often that I come across the topic of a technological singularity regarding artificial intelligence. I spend a fair amount of energy considering this, and do think about it regularly.
I honestly believe that once the singularity approaches us, we will also have the capability to improve ourselves. Eventually we will reach the opportunity to act upon our own evolution. I believe this is an inherent part of our survival as a species. If we do not take evolution by control, then we will be doomed to live out the "Terminator" scenario.
If we do not act to directly control our own advancement of our species, we will end up creating something that can overpower us. It is an inevitable part of our being that is built into us, that we strive for continued advancement. If we do not advance along with our creations, we will perish of our own doing.
What we need to discover to create true AI is along the same lines with which we require to further the understanding of our own body and mind. It is with this knowledge (and others) with which we can take hold of our own advancement, and maintain control.
Without this "control", we are doomed to live out extinction via our own doing. We must take the reigns, and move along-side our creations. Otherwise, we will never survive.
I honestly believe that once the singularity approaches us, we will also have the capability to improve ourselves. Eventually we will reach the opportunity to act upon our own evolution. I believe this is an inherent part of our survival as a species. If we do not take evolution by control, then we will be doomed to live out the "Terminator" scenario.
If we do not act to directly control our own advancement of our species, we will end up creating something that can overpower us. It is an inevitable part of our being that is built into us, that we strive for continued advancement. If we do not advance along with our creations, we will perish of our own doing.
What we need to discover to create true AI is along the same lines with which we require to further the understanding of our own body and mind. It is with this knowledge (and others) with which we can take hold of our own advancement, and maintain control.
Without this "control", we are doomed to live out extinction via our own doing. We must take the reigns, and move along-side our creations. Otherwise, we will never survive.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Governmental Change
It really is frustrating to see how stubborn and resistant to change governments, companies, and pretty much any large group of people as a whole really are. I suppose it may likely be a natural tendency of any grouping of a population once it reaches some certain size. This doesn't, however, make it any less frustrating to consider how things might be vastly improved upon only to realize how innately difficult it would be to implement.
Progress can be defined as advancement or change in an attempt to reach perfection. It is this definition that requires any government we set up to allow, encourage, and embrace change even if it may be radical in some ways. In some sense, we must even demand that our cultures, governments, and societies exhibit constant and never ending change in hope of progress. If you look long and hard enough, you can easily come to the conclusion that even some of the U.S. founding fathers understood that progress required eventual change in the government they were attempting to build.
As some people have mused;
Sure, this statement is mixing one specific definition of progress with a completely different definition of congress but it does still bring up a fair point. If we want to embrace the continual progress of our entire species, we cannot accept any one method of government and society as the end all solution. While at one point in time the form of representative democracy set in place in this country was a novel and brilliant idea, that in no way means it will never become outdated or begin to hinder our societal progression. Because of this, I believe the best way to become less stubborn and resistant to change just may be for all of us to wholeheartedly accept change.
Progress can be defined as advancement or change in an attempt to reach perfection. It is this definition that requires any government we set up to allow, encourage, and embrace change even if it may be radical in some ways. In some sense, we must even demand that our cultures, governments, and societies exhibit constant and never ending change in hope of progress. If you look long and hard enough, you can easily come to the conclusion that even some of the U.S. founding fathers understood that progress required eventual change in the government they were attempting to build.
As some people have mused;
"If pros and cons are opposite, is progress the opposite of congress?"
Sure, this statement is mixing one specific definition of progress with a completely different definition of congress but it does still bring up a fair point. If we want to embrace the continual progress of our entire species, we cannot accept any one method of government and society as the end all solution. While at one point in time the form of representative democracy set in place in this country was a novel and brilliant idea, that in no way means it will never become outdated or begin to hinder our societal progression. Because of this, I believe the best way to become less stubborn and resistant to change just may be for all of us to wholeheartedly accept change.
This is only the beginning
I've begun to realize that a fair many of us in this world are beginning to change how we see things. Deep inside ourselves a lot of thoughts, feelings, and open questions are mixing about just waiting to be considered and paid attention to. Not enough of us, however, are actually putting forth the effort to think about our thoughts. I intend to utilize this tool our collective minds have devised, which we call a blog, to attempt to look at myself and record these thoughts. I hope this will in turn help others elsewhere to do the same. If we don't take the time to think internally and know ourselves, then this phenomenon known as consciousness is nothing more than a by-product created by the advanced evolution of a great bundle of nerve cells and synapses.
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