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On The Knowledge Argument (for Qualia) (for reference: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/) My explanation for this depends on the distinction between the two often synonymously used terms : ‘Knowing’ vs ‘Knowledge’. To me ‘knowing’ refers to “the process of experiencing something’ which is very dependent on the subject concerned. For humans for example this could be achieved by either creating the corresponding pattern of neural firing or implanting a corresponding memory directly on to the subject’s head. The term ‘Knowledge’ on the other hand, should be used to mean the abstract model of the world that can be used for prediction. This model can have any possible representation. It’s really the ability to predict that gives any model or representation the quality of ‘knowledge’. Knowing ‘red color’ for example, is achieved by the particular way (a pattern) neurons are excited in our brain. This process is dependent on the system (human in this case) we are talking about and not just on the physical event (red color in this case). There could be any number of ways neurons could be fired in our brains. Hence the phrase - “knowing everything there is to know about a certain physical stuff’ translates to emulating the potentially infinite number of ways electric signals can be propagated with varying strength and pattern. Electric signal being analog and number of possible ordering of billions of neurons being huge, this process is practically infeasible. This infeasibility however does not take anything away from the predictive power of the knowledge itself. That is one could still possess all the knowledge that is relevant for a specific physical phenomenon. Complete knowledge still make sense (not referring to the neural firing) and can be defined as the ability to predict the outcome of every possible combination of this event with some accuracy. This goes to explain the paradox regarding ‘Mary the brilliant color scientist’ (Jackson 1982) in the following way. According to my argument above, Mary can have all possible knowledge to predict anything related to the color phenomenon including the colors she has not experienced (the exact neural firing pattern did not happen in her head). She for example can predict what would happen if the color emitted by green leaves would change to red, how that could affect the surrounding ecology, the heat distribution and so on. She could in essence re-create the universe (if she has knowledge of all concepts in addition to color) without having to experience it by herself. An interesting point to note to keep confusions at bay is, one could use the second type of knowledge to create the neural firing pattern in ones own head to get the experience as well. Even more curious thing to do would be to just implant the memory of such neural firing directly - which I argue would have the same effect. After all people who claimed to see the color red only do so by virtue of their memories only. They don’t constantly experience it as they did the first time. The takeaway from this is -- it is at least in theory possible that Mary CAN know everything there is to know about for a specific thing (or anything) by using the knowledge of how neurons works and using this knowledge in conjunction with color knowledge to excite her neurons in specific patterns.

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How to develop a iPhone app

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I have jumped, and then hyper-jumped. I have been jumping so high and so far, I have gone out of the field. Graduated.

Good feeling

I have started to feel the annealing is complete.

The only way out of delusion is to start believing in at least the minimum things in that world. 

Reboot

How many can you survive?

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my 
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the 
spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be 
done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the 
loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate 
all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to 
shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing 
under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
- Albert Einstein

Apple Sucks

iOS 6 has been consistently crashing every few hours.
Shame on you Apple (www.apple.com)

On "The Primacy of Consciousness - Peter Russell"

The audience sounded very childish. Laughing and clapping every now and then. What is this? I seriously doubt their understanding of the lecture.

And the lecture although has novelty isn't very solid. The idea that light is somehow special is very naive. The reason why C is involved in many equations is NOTHING to do with light itself. Light happens to be an easy example of an electromagnetic wave that we can refer to. The underlying idea really is coupled to the wave and electromagnetism.

The central idea is very similar to if not same as the concept that we can't prove if there is a real world or if everything is a simulation.

Hard problem of Consciousness

With life progressing, my consciousness is not getting any clearer. Everything is more and more confusing every day.

Is there a God?

Weak Agnosticism is the closest well-known position to mine.

Why don't atheists believe just to be safe?

Very good question. In fact one of the very few good rational questions religious people can ask is this one.

So here is the answer. First, the position atheists take are not the best one. (Yes surprisingly).
The most scientific approach is to accept that WE DO NOT KNOW what happens after death.

Now the response to the question more directly. If, there is indeed a God that is infinitely merciful towards us, he should after all understand the position a non-religious person takes. The non-relgious person is relying on his intellectual capabilities, his sincerity and honesty in understanding the world presented before him. The most clear abilities we human have is not our mystic psychic abilities but our clear capacity to conjecture, question, experiment and understanding capacities. Knowledge in science is never private and always open to all at the same level. Do we also have supernatural capacities that are not obvious? Who knows, we may have it. But that is shrouded in doubt to be very least. So as a simple human being I have really two options to guide my path. One is to rely simple well understood (god-given) abilities to understand the world or to forgo it and rely on faith that is cloudy and not at all well explained.

To me, it is then, overwhelmingly more probable that, if I were a god, I would love and appreciate those creatures of mine that followed the simple, logical and clear path. And I would find little virtue in faith and such things. Clearly because, I did give him the capabilities to reason things. And I also made the world in a way that validates the existence of reason very very very well. So, accepting science is accepting God in the most honest and graceful way possible.

Now, even if the science were to lead my creation to incorrect conclusions, I would still prefer it by a big margin, simply because the effort is so pure and honest. A student who tries his best to come up with an answer logically and fails is much more honorable to one who simply guesses and gets it right.

If I as a tiny insignificant human can be kind enough to understand this simple principle, then the real God should pose no danger at all to the rational minds. A rational mind is an open mind. A mind enlightened by not cloudy ideas and faith, but knowledge obtained through hard work and honesty. So God will love it.

And the final point is, if the God is indeed the kind that I hope to be, then He might actually punish the ones that did choose the path of believing in things that he did not make obvious. And moreover there are so many religions to choose from. How can tell with any degree of authority that hiduism is better than chrisitianity for example (without lack of generality)? So the pascals wager (google it) can backfire too. You dont know if you are the ones that are making God unhappy as well. And that God could be a God of a different religion as well.

So, a chrisitian or muslim or whover, is in no better position to hope for better time after death. As a matter of fact a rational person has all the more chance he made the right choice in the eye of God.

Starts Now!

Weak points

Your greatest vulnerabilities are in things that you need, that you are earnestly looking for.

If you are searching hard for a cure to a disease, it will be easier to fool you with fake medicines.
If you are looking for answers to bigger questions in life, you are an ideal prey for all the religious agendas.

So stay watchful in every step of life, small or big, about what is it that you are looking for at any particular moment. And constantly remind yourself of your vulnerability to anything in that field.

Death justifies everything.

Funny as we are busy looking for the justification of death, when death itself is the justification of everything else.

General Formula for Success

These are some of the most generally applicable techniques and strategies to succeed:

1. Start early. Earlier than most others. In most things where any sort of competition is involved, starting early gives you an unfair advantage.

2. Show persistence. Repetitive trial. If you can't do something in one shot, try it gradually, each time improving the quality a little bit.

3. Be courageous and self confident. It's usually relatively better to overestimate yourself than underestimating.

4. Maintain excellent physique.

Tension

It's hard to progress during a war. It's only harder other times.

How to write a good book

These are the key points you need to keep in mind:

1. Appropriateness of words

2. Each sentence is tightly logically following from the previous set of sentences. (Make it increasingly harder for the reader to disagree with each successive statement )

3. Minimize context switch (only when the next sentence I need to write can’t be derived from previous one.)

4. Concreteness. Minimize ambiguity without losing reach/breadth of expression

5. Shorter without sacrificing lucidity

6. Novelty/ Originality. Each paragraph should have a clear original contribution.

Sand Castle

You can't base something eternal like your soul on things that are subject to change any time - that is your subjective experience or qualia.

Organize your thoughts. The rest will follow.

How to make an argument

If you want to be liked by people even when arguing and without sacrificing your personality, you may want to try the following principles.

1. Avoid using negative connotation, even when you mean it. Always start by appreciating what they said explaining them back that you understood what they said. Whether you agreed or not is not important. Make sure you repeat what they say in a way that clearly proves you heard them.

2. Talk less. The less you do, the higher the chance of being heard. Do not reply immediately.

3. Adapt to the other persons situation and background. Using the same angle of attack to everyone won't work. And accept the fact that the amount of information you can deliver to anyone in a specific time is limited by the receiver's capacity and condition.

4. Avoid being loud. Do not insult.

5. Stay on the point. Avoid logical fallacies (google/wiki it).

How to stay focused

These are the things that you can do to stay focused. The list only includes the points that are not obvious.

1. Take a shower, eat some food and drink a cup of regular hot tea, without milk and with sugar
2. Monitor the progression of your thought or topic of interest. If you are changing context, put a marker so that you can return back to the original context.
3. Do not move your body too much.
4. Stay slightly hungry
5. Breathe deep and easy

How to rent an apartment or house

These are the things you would like to check before making a decision while choosing your next home. The list only includes items that are usually overlooked and not very intuitive at first thought.

1. Is there good reception of cell phone inside the house?
2. Checking sex offender and crime report near the location using crimereport.com or similar website
3. You can look up the names of residents of the nearby houses from the county's tax commissioner's website. The information is really public and free.
4. Traffic report. You can use google map to see traffic pattern during different times of the day
5. Drive by the place once during weekdays and also in weekends to see the local vibes, what kids do, what kind of people hang out, etc.
6. Is there bug problems? Bed bugs? Roaches?

Recipe for Vegetable Soup

Made vegetable soup and it came out very good.

I used:

Vegetable Oil,

Onion,
Baby carrots, 
Zucchini,
Squash
Green Beans
Salsa (that we eat with Tostito)
Chicken Broth (reduced sodium)

Rosemary
Pach foron (Bangladeshi spice mix)
Black pepper
Salt

Cooked in high pressure

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Change

To look for change, to alter direction, to break the status quo, to diversify is one of the most fundamental tendencies of a mind.

What entails Understanding

The argument from reason didn't convince me well.

There is a clear difference between computing an input information to produce a specific output, from understanding it in human way. The difference is not vague, and not complex.

What we meant by understanding or feeling something (concept) is the relation it has to the other concepts and. Evey word has a meaning because of it's context. Rain means something that depends on the concept (and thereby to the feeling) of water, the sound of it, the visual feeling and so on. If a computer program is written that could identify if it is raining by the visual aspect of rain, it will not have understood it, because it has missed the sound quality of it. The argument is inductive. That is, if you augment the program by adding sound detection, it will still miss the sensation it produces on skin, or the capability of us to recognize it by also the touch of raindrops. The crux of this argument is, to be able to say a computer program has "understood" rain, it will have to produce or simulate an impact on it's state that is as vivid as a human could have. The easy and immediate objection to this argument is, such vivid impact in our brain is not very precisely specified and therefore the definition is vague and not very useful. The response is, the fact that we can't satisfactorily define this impact network/context is not a weakness of my argument but rather a lacking in our understanding in how concepts relate in our head - which actually is being made clear this argument. In addition to this, I also argue that no two human beings will also share the exact mapping of a concept. And it is the overall similarity rather, that is shared between humans. In simpler terms, no two human beings understands rain in the exact same way. And therefore if a computer program is sufficiently close to the complexity (how many concepts is influenced by a given concept) of human, it could be accepted as an entity that understands it.

Unknown

There is nothing more unsettling than a complete unknown.

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Past, Future

Who is there to blame? Whom am I blaming really?
There is nobody to blame. Nothing is going to be ever explained. No one is responsible for any of this.
Expectations will not be met and I can't get rid of them too. It will just be like now. For some more time. Until it all ends.

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Try to

Before you say or do something, try to understand what is the mental state that is causing you to say or do it. And judge yourself. Are you proud of it? Only if your answer is yes, should you proceed.

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