Sunday, November 27, 2011
On Surrounded by Associations
I hate the desert. It's hot, coarse, and generally uninviting. It's the Earth's way of saying "Get out!" And yet there are so many people out there that find the desert to be something more than a bunch of rocks and sand. For them it speaks to something deeper inside. Having grown up in very forested areas, I feel more at home with trees around me. So a place like the desert does the opposite of speak to me, it repels me. So it's understandable why I wouldn't like the desert. It's someplace foreign to me. The really strange part is that this feeling of being at home in the desert doesn't only occur to people who grew up in the desert. Someone living in Chicago could have this unexplainable calling to a place they've only seen in pictures. Somehow how though that's where they would feel the most at home. What is it about these different environments that awaken something inside of us?
I've talked about places that feel like home because of the people who live there. I've even acknowledged that there are people themselves who feel like home. What is it about certain surroundings that makes us feel more at home than others? Obviously we're all individuals and have our own specific desires, but for a lot of people it's hard to fully quantify why one place, like the desert, is more suited for them than another. I have a friend who grew up in Phoenix and now can only go back for special occasions. The idea of living there is out of the question. For as long as he can remember he felt this need to be near the mountains of Colorado. When he first went there he knew it was where he wanted to live, even though it took him several years to make it happen. In that time that feeling never diminished, like so many flights of fancy that come and go throughout our lives.
How is it that some places are colored by seemingly unrelated associations? When I first moved to the desert it was completely different from anything I had known. For a time it was fine because it took me forward in life. Eventually though I found that it was not even close to where I wanted or needed to be. Combined with several unpleasant experiences over the course of my time there has forever created a negative association with the desert as a whole. Even the place I currently live has connotations towards very specific aspects of my life, some of which alter how I look at this place. It's hard to say if we can ever really look at a place without being influenced by the surrounding associations we've built.
Have you ever walked into a room and known something was missing? At first glance you may not be able to immediately spot that thing that's out of place, but somehow the whole room feels wrong due to its absence. Your brain is aware of the change, even if you haven't quite caught up to realizing it. It's interesting how a lot of life can be the same way. A part of us knows that something isn't there. It's figuring out that which is absence that's not always easy. There are some aspects of our lives that when left unfulfilled become painfully apparent. The absence of food, sleep, or even love all make themselves known almost immediately. The complete lack of any of those leaves an obvious gaping hole in our lives. It's when we lose pieces of something a little bit at a time that it becomes easier to overlook their absence or at least not notice until it has become glaringly apparent. When you're driving down a dark road at night you have to be looking for what you can see, but you also have to be looking for what you can't. Having grown up in a place where large animals could wander out in front of you it got to be second nature to be on the lookout for the absence of what was in front of you. Sometimes what you can't see is more important. There are places in our lives that seem to supply us with everything we feel we need, while there are places which feel like something is missing. The question really becomes is it something real that's missing or just those old associations creeping in and painting a picture that may not really exist except in our mind?
I've talked about places that feel like home because of the people who live there. I've even acknowledged that there are people themselves who feel like home. What is it about certain surroundings that makes us feel more at home than others? Obviously we're all individuals and have our own specific desires, but for a lot of people it's hard to fully quantify why one place, like the desert, is more suited for them than another. I have a friend who grew up in Phoenix and now can only go back for special occasions. The idea of living there is out of the question. For as long as he can remember he felt this need to be near the mountains of Colorado. When he first went there he knew it was where he wanted to live, even though it took him several years to make it happen. In that time that feeling never diminished, like so many flights of fancy that come and go throughout our lives.
How is it that some places are colored by seemingly unrelated associations? When I first moved to the desert it was completely different from anything I had known. For a time it was fine because it took me forward in life. Eventually though I found that it was not even close to where I wanted or needed to be. Combined with several unpleasant experiences over the course of my time there has forever created a negative association with the desert as a whole. Even the place I currently live has connotations towards very specific aspects of my life, some of which alter how I look at this place. It's hard to say if we can ever really look at a place without being influenced by the surrounding associations we've built.
Have you ever walked into a room and known something was missing? At first glance you may not be able to immediately spot that thing that's out of place, but somehow the whole room feels wrong due to its absence. Your brain is aware of the change, even if you haven't quite caught up to realizing it. It's interesting how a lot of life can be the same way. A part of us knows that something isn't there. It's figuring out that which is absence that's not always easy. There are some aspects of our lives that when left unfulfilled become painfully apparent. The absence of food, sleep, or even love all make themselves known almost immediately. The complete lack of any of those leaves an obvious gaping hole in our lives. It's when we lose pieces of something a little bit at a time that it becomes easier to overlook their absence or at least not notice until it has become glaringly apparent. When you're driving down a dark road at night you have to be looking for what you can see, but you also have to be looking for what you can't. Having grown up in a place where large animals could wander out in front of you it got to be second nature to be on the lookout for the absence of what was in front of you. Sometimes what you can't see is more important. There are places in our lives that seem to supply us with everything we feel we need, while there are places which feel like something is missing. The question really becomes is it something real that's missing or just those old associations creeping in and painting a picture that may not really exist except in our mind?
Sunday, November 20, 2011
On the March Forward
Not all that long ago your grandparents were your age. And not that long before that they were just children, with no concept of you even existing. The world around them was the newest it had ever been. They probably looked back at their own grandparents as ancient reminders of a simpler time. As with anything, what was once new is now considered a relic. Once again today's generation sees what they've created as the best there's ever been. Now I'm not trying to take away from the accomplishments of those who have put their hard work into making today the best it can be. Still, if you think about it we've only really been "technologically advanced" for a little over a hundred years. While that may be a long time in the span of our individual lives, it's a little more than a blink in the span of our species existence. Really we've only just scratched the surface of what we could accomplish.
There was a time when a computer that fit in your pocket was something you'd see in a science fiction movie. I wonder if the people who dreamed up that idea knew what was coming or if the people who watched those movies decided they'd do whatever it took to make it a reality. Today we have our own science fiction, some of which is slowly becoming actual science, while some of it only leads to other ideas. Whatever happens there will come a time when the most advanced thinking will become obsolete. It's sometimes hard to not think that what we do today is futile considering how tomorrow it will seem like such an old concept. As we progress forward our current notions are changed and sometimes revealed to be completely incorrect. We're only going on what we know at the time, so it stands to reason that the more we know the more we realize just how much we don't know. That may be the only constant in this universe. Some people would like to believe that eventually we'll reach a point of complete understanding, but it seems next to impossible given how big and ancient everything is. Maybe we're not supposed to know it all. Maybe we're always supposed to learn so that we know what's next for us to learn.
The world was old when you were young. Sometimes it's hard for me to really get my head around that fact. Fourteen billion years is just a number and I know that it's really big. Still the only way I can really start to understand it is if I went outside and considered each grain of sand as a year. In order to come close to having all the sand I need to show how old the universe is, I would have a desert. Considering how short our time is it's not surprising to feel a little insignificant when thinking about how only in the last third of known existence did our planet even exist. What will it be like when twice that much time has passed again? Will we all just be some galactic afterthought? Maybe all that means is that since our duration in this world is so limited that everything we do matters. Some might argue the opposite, that we're just a blip in time. Our galaxy isn't in a good neighborhood. It's out in the middle of nowhere compared to what we know is out there. If that's the case then what does it matter what we do because in the grand scheme of things we'll just be forgotten or lost. That's a bit of a hopeless outlook on life. Maybe the universe won't notice when we're gone, but we'll notice while we're here. Today we're here and we're alive. Tomorrow we may go back to being space dust floating out in the abyss, but that shouldn't stop us from screaming to the heavens "We are here and we matter!", even if we're the only ones who hear. If this is all going to be long forgotten then there is nothing to lose in trying to accomplish everything while we're here.
There was a time when a computer that fit in your pocket was something you'd see in a science fiction movie. I wonder if the people who dreamed up that idea knew what was coming or if the people who watched those movies decided they'd do whatever it took to make it a reality. Today we have our own science fiction, some of which is slowly becoming actual science, while some of it only leads to other ideas. Whatever happens there will come a time when the most advanced thinking will become obsolete. It's sometimes hard to not think that what we do today is futile considering how tomorrow it will seem like such an old concept. As we progress forward our current notions are changed and sometimes revealed to be completely incorrect. We're only going on what we know at the time, so it stands to reason that the more we know the more we realize just how much we don't know. That may be the only constant in this universe. Some people would like to believe that eventually we'll reach a point of complete understanding, but it seems next to impossible given how big and ancient everything is. Maybe we're not supposed to know it all. Maybe we're always supposed to learn so that we know what's next for us to learn.
The world was old when you were young. Sometimes it's hard for me to really get my head around that fact. Fourteen billion years is just a number and I know that it's really big. Still the only way I can really start to understand it is if I went outside and considered each grain of sand as a year. In order to come close to having all the sand I need to show how old the universe is, I would have a desert. Considering how short our time is it's not surprising to feel a little insignificant when thinking about how only in the last third of known existence did our planet even exist. What will it be like when twice that much time has passed again? Will we all just be some galactic afterthought? Maybe all that means is that since our duration in this world is so limited that everything we do matters. Some might argue the opposite, that we're just a blip in time. Our galaxy isn't in a good neighborhood. It's out in the middle of nowhere compared to what we know is out there. If that's the case then what does it matter what we do because in the grand scheme of things we'll just be forgotten or lost. That's a bit of a hopeless outlook on life. Maybe the universe won't notice when we're gone, but we'll notice while we're here. Today we're here and we're alive. Tomorrow we may go back to being space dust floating out in the abyss, but that shouldn't stop us from screaming to the heavens "We are here and we matter!", even if we're the only ones who hear. If this is all going to be long forgotten then there is nothing to lose in trying to accomplish everything while we're here.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
On A Dynamic World
I play a lot of video games and one of the major limiting factors in games today and really from their inception, is the fact that no matter how pretty the world is, it's ultimately scripted. The creatures and characters within the world move along a predefined path, even if that path is very wide. You'll notice it whenever you try to do something out of bounds of what the programmers intended. Sometimes you'll find the thing you're interacting with to repeat itself because it simply doesn't know how to respond beyond what it's been told to accept. With artificial intelligence there is a test to see if a machine has the ability to think for itself. So far no computer system has completely passed this test, although many have tried. It's hard to say just when we'll find ourselves surrounded by machines that think. The question is though, if we were to turn a test like that on ourselves how well would we actually do given a long enough testing period.
Each of us lives our life based on the experiences we've gained over time. We have the capability to learn from these experiences and with any luck our mistakes in the past help prevent mistakes in the future. If you're anything like me though, it doesn't really stop the mistakes from happening though. Instead it's just a variation on a theme over and over again. Could this be because we ourselves are limited by life parameters? A computer has no idea how to respond to a question about theoretical physics if it has no experience with it. It has to be programmed into its system for it to have any understanding. Our brains are very much the same way. If you were to ask me a question about theoretical physics I'd do roughly as well as a computer that could speak. So let's say both the computer and I are given some experience and we're now able to respond to questions regarding the theory of everything. Our answers would again be limited to the knowledge we've been given combined with our previous experiences. As a rational creature, I may be able to make intuitive leaps in logic based on seemingly unrelated fields of study. The computer would also be able answer in its own way. Given time though, eventually we'd both come to the upper limit of our knowledge and experience.
When we meet new people for the first time we may find them refreshing and interesting because at least initially, they are outside our experience. What they say or do may seem like a mystery until we get to know them better. As we get to know them we can start to predict how they'll react to certain situations. If we spend a really long time with them we may start to know them better than they know themselves. The things they do become almost repetitive. That's not exactly a bad thing either. No person has endless experience, even if we wish we did. On a long enough timeline everyone will come to a point where the well is dry. If that's the case then just how dynamic are we compared to some video game character or robot that's being tested for its ability to think on its own? We look a computer system and decide through a complex series of tests that it doesn't think and yet if we were to extend the same kind of test to ourselves it's likely we'd eventually come to a point where we'd be hard pressed to say if we have intelligent behavior. What if there is something else out there in the universe that has its own standards of determining if something is intelligent? Something with standards so far beyond what we can comprehend that we'd be looked at roughly the same way we look at a calculator. Yes we can do simple tasks, but we can't "think". Does that call into question our abilities or our standards? Just how sure can we be when our only basis for intelligent thought is how everything compares to our own minds?
Each of us lives our life based on the experiences we've gained over time. We have the capability to learn from these experiences and with any luck our mistakes in the past help prevent mistakes in the future. If you're anything like me though, it doesn't really stop the mistakes from happening though. Instead it's just a variation on a theme over and over again. Could this be because we ourselves are limited by life parameters? A computer has no idea how to respond to a question about theoretical physics if it has no experience with it. It has to be programmed into its system for it to have any understanding. Our brains are very much the same way. If you were to ask me a question about theoretical physics I'd do roughly as well as a computer that could speak. So let's say both the computer and I are given some experience and we're now able to respond to questions regarding the theory of everything. Our answers would again be limited to the knowledge we've been given combined with our previous experiences. As a rational creature, I may be able to make intuitive leaps in logic based on seemingly unrelated fields of study. The computer would also be able answer in its own way. Given time though, eventually we'd both come to the upper limit of our knowledge and experience.
When we meet new people for the first time we may find them refreshing and interesting because at least initially, they are outside our experience. What they say or do may seem like a mystery until we get to know them better. As we get to know them we can start to predict how they'll react to certain situations. If we spend a really long time with them we may start to know them better than they know themselves. The things they do become almost repetitive. That's not exactly a bad thing either. No person has endless experience, even if we wish we did. On a long enough timeline everyone will come to a point where the well is dry. If that's the case then just how dynamic are we compared to some video game character or robot that's being tested for its ability to think on its own? We look a computer system and decide through a complex series of tests that it doesn't think and yet if we were to extend the same kind of test to ourselves it's likely we'd eventually come to a point where we'd be hard pressed to say if we have intelligent behavior. What if there is something else out there in the universe that has its own standards of determining if something is intelligent? Something with standards so far beyond what we can comprehend that we'd be looked at roughly the same way we look at a calculator. Yes we can do simple tasks, but we can't "think". Does that call into question our abilities or our standards? Just how sure can we be when our only basis for intelligent thought is how everything compares to our own minds?
Sunday, November 13, 2011
On Changing Horses
For many of us our path through life is set before we really have much say in it. That's not to say we have no choice but there is a lot of factors beyond our ability to change. Let's say you grew up wanting to be a robotics designer because it seemed like something wonderful. You live in a rural area where the majority of people around you go into trades rather than high tech industries. It's not impossible to follow the path, it's just that you're going to have more influences that steer you towards something else. Possibly something you didn't even think of in the first place.
It's seems that everyone has goals for their life and that's good because it gives you something to strive for. It creates purpose beyond simply existing for the sake of existing. These goals could be as common as graduating, getting married, or finding a job that pays you a lot of money. They could be noble like moving to Africa to help those in need or searching for a cure to a cruel disease. What do you do if you don't have goals? I'm not talking about lazy people who are content with doing nothing for as long as possible. I'm talking about those who just don't know what they want. For them trying to figure out what they want from life is like a baby trying to express the fact that it's hungry, they don't even know how to ask. Looking around it may seem like everyone else has it figured out or at least is on the path to figuring it out. They have things they're working towards or they've accomplished already, meanwhile your own life seems to be stalled as you try and figure out which direction you're supposed to be pointed in.
So you're on your road of life that was set out for you and you start to wonder if where you're going is really the place for you. Everything up until that point could have been working towards something that is now in question. Is it possible to step off the path and go somewhere else? It seems that it's very hard to make the change once you've committed to something. There are those out there who would say something about making a bed and sleeping in it but this life where it's entirely possible there isn't anything afterwards. We don't know how long we're here for so shouldn't every attempt be made to get the most out of it? For some they don't get to change direction until they've already spent a lifetime going down another road. After thirty years they can finally retire from the choices they made a long time ago. That can't be the only option though. So how do we change horses midstream without falling in?
It's seems that everyone has goals for their life and that's good because it gives you something to strive for. It creates purpose beyond simply existing for the sake of existing. These goals could be as common as graduating, getting married, or finding a job that pays you a lot of money. They could be noble like moving to Africa to help those in need or searching for a cure to a cruel disease. What do you do if you don't have goals? I'm not talking about lazy people who are content with doing nothing for as long as possible. I'm talking about those who just don't know what they want. For them trying to figure out what they want from life is like a baby trying to express the fact that it's hungry, they don't even know how to ask. Looking around it may seem like everyone else has it figured out or at least is on the path to figuring it out. They have things they're working towards or they've accomplished already, meanwhile your own life seems to be stalled as you try and figure out which direction you're supposed to be pointed in.
So you're on your road of life that was set out for you and you start to wonder if where you're going is really the place for you. Everything up until that point could have been working towards something that is now in question. Is it possible to step off the path and go somewhere else? It seems that it's very hard to make the change once you've committed to something. There are those out there who would say something about making a bed and sleeping in it but this life where it's entirely possible there isn't anything afterwards. We don't know how long we're here for so shouldn't every attempt be made to get the most out of it? For some they don't get to change direction until they've already spent a lifetime going down another road. After thirty years they can finally retire from the choices they made a long time ago. That can't be the only option though. So how do we change horses midstream without falling in?
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