Eduard's blog

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On "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F"

May 14, 2018

Intro So I finished reading listening to the (audio)book. Seems like I was right about a few things: * Reflection is very important, questioning myself * Meditation * Mortality... We all end up in the same place I probably was less wrong about my life 3-4 years ago than I am now. In the past 3 years, I have been more and more pessimistic. But maybe that was a good thing, because this is either a three-year step back or, by realising this, a full step forward. I think there are a few more things to consider: Pillars Some time ago I asked a question: If our minds can be so uncertain, and if our views are biased and riddled with subjectivism... how can we have something "constant", something certain? I.e. assuming worst case scenario that we were crazy, how would we know it? Back then my answer was probably an acceptable one: friends / people who care about us. By measuring our "distance" we can ensure we don't stray too far into craz

To believe or not to believe

December 26, 2013

Imagine one big white column. That is your religion. That is something that you can define and that you can keep to. It is also something that you can go back and ask for guidance from. It is a reference point. Why do you need it? So far logic leads to loose strands... It doesn't lead to contradictions but it can lead to self sustaining theories - not quite sure what these are, but they might be along the lines of "I'm one of many therefore I think like the many". Or "everybody before me thought the meaning of life was to have kids, then that's probably the meaning of life", or something along those lines I hope. The problem with this is that it doesn't keep you from having a self destructing behaviour, it doesn't keep you from making bad decisions aka it doesn't provide a foot-hold. It provides a vast surface of ideas and possibilities but it doesn't provide a reference point. Because of that it's easy to go astray. I

Forehead Numbers Brain Teaser of Khan Academy

October 11, 2012

Today I remembered a little brainteaser I saw on Khan Academy quite a while back: Khan Academy Link or Youtube Link What surprises me though is that people still seem to think that there are values for which this can not be solved. My conjecture is that it CAN be solved for all 3-tuples of numbers provided that the participants know that they are unique. I would recommend seeing the teaser and understanding the logic behind it before reading further. 3 years ago, when I first saw this, I posted a reply on Youtube describing the same 'game' from the perspective of a player who sees 15 and 11. For the sake of simplicity we'll call the player with 15 A and the one with 11 on his forehead C. Therefore the game is described from the perspective of B: A-pass B-pass C-pass A-pass B-pass C-pass A-pass B-pass C-pass A-figures out his number (15) B-figures out his number also C-figures out his number as well (11) The question then is, what is B's number (

Consciousness

May 16, 2012

Hello again, after quite some time, I decided again to write some of my thoughts on my little corner of the internet. The topics I'll write about are consciousness and intelligence along with bits and bobs I've read in my past time. Finally I'll describe a thought that came to me yesterday regarding the Halting Problem and if somebody (not "something") could solve it. I should start with the idea of self-consciousness and how it could be described. The starting point for this, one could say, is the film "The Prestige". The film poses one interesting question, that is, "if I could copy all of the molecules in my body (in effect, perfect cloning) would there be any distinction between me and my clone?" From the outside, of course, not. But! internally, there should still be the concept of a me and my clone. My opinion is that there isn't such a concept. Think of it this way: let's say I have two pods, one of them painted red and one o

Not "red pill OR blue pill" but more like "red pill and MIGHT've been blue pill"

March 09, 2011

In my previous article I covered, from my point of view, the subject of free will . After rereading it, I became aware of some of the logic faults it contained and decided to give the matter a bit more thought. This concept is always bugging me because it seems that we are constantly constrained by the decisions we "make". Somebody even suggested that my logic basically implies destiny , well I don't believe in destiny, because of the effects of quantum mechanics. Still, I came to realize that we are not far from the concept of predeterminism. Now I am an atheist and that means that I don't believe in concepts like "souls" ; also, I consider human beings and living organisms in general to be nothing more than extremely complex systems but which are undoubtedly ruled by both the cause and effect principle and in some cases random outcomes. In other words I don't see the fundamental difference between a human and something as a bunch of rocks reactin

Red pill or blue pill

March 14, 2010

I remembered last night a topic that I forgot to cover here, more precisely the subject of free will. It occurred to me a while back, when somebody mentioned the fact that since our minds are defined by the synapses our neurons make and since the synapses are to some extent *semi-random events we can't have free will. *semi-random as in predictable to a certain degree, like 95% chances that will happen 4% chances this will happen and 1% complete randomness. The way I see it, quite the opposite's true. But first, let me get a thing straight: here, "free will" means one's ability to make decisions "as wished", or in other words, nobody should be able to tell with complete certainty what decision one will make in any given situation. Note that I'm NOT referring to free will as the right to do anything we wish. If we consider the semi-randomness of our thoughts, then free will is possible. If however, our brains behave in classical terms, as in