Tcepsa's Thoughts

Well, 2011, you were a pretty good year for me. Some rough spots, but also some great spots. Still working on sorting some of that out. Already in over my head for projects for the new year, but I like the look of them. They're almost entirely things that I either want to do or desire the immediate consequences of having done them. Maybe this could be characterized as moving into the realm of "intermediate" with a number of my skills. Maybe it's a further mental shift away from my perfectionism. Not taking any more classes also will definitely help also. Okay, time to get started!

A little gem that gipsieee pointed me to earlier this afternoon.

Don't Wake The Programmer

I never thought of programming like this before, but after thinking about it, and about how it works for me, holy crap he's exactly right! No wonder I get so irritable when I'm interrupted abruptly--or why I can handle little interruptions reasonably well, but as soon as it goes for more than a few minutes or takes a higher level of concentration, the dream falls apart.

It also explains why thinking about a problem that I'm trying to write code for and daydreaming feel so similar ^_^

Disclaimer: There are assumptions in here that I do not explicitly state as such. If any of my assertions are incorrect, please let me know.

I've heard the term "justice" used in conjunction with the current financial situation quite a bit lately, especially with the recent revelation of the AIG bonuses. It's been along the lines that people want to make sure that "justice is served" and that the people who created this mess are "brought to justice."

I was about to write, "that's a noble sentiment, but..." but I'm not sure that I actually feel that way; I'm not sure I can even get that far without tripping myself up on my own point that I want to make here. It seems to me that people are being careless with a very important word, and I always get upset when that happens. Justice is one of our dearest tenets; it's so important to us that we have dedicated one of our government's three branches to it.

Or perhaps I misunderstand the word. I thought that justice was, by definition, relevant to law. If the law is broken, justice is served by attempting to undo, minimize, or repair the effects of the transgression. Those who break the law are brought to justice by being forced to contribute, often heavily, to that reparation. Sometimes they are also incarcerated, to protect the general populace from them until it can be ascertained whether they present any further threat to their fellow humans. At least that's how I understand it is ideally supposed to work. My understanding is that the contracts granting the bonuses were all done on the up and up, completely within the boundaries of the relevant laws; no law has been broken by giving these people these bonuses. To say that they must be brought to justice for receiving their rightful bonuses is grossly unfair, for they have broken no laws and therefore committed no injustice and yet it as much as calls them criminals.

... or perhaps things are more deeply broken than I originally suspected. Perhaps justice means something else to most people these days. What that something else is, I am not sure. The best thing I can think of is that it means the fulfillment of their own moral expectations. But this is treacherous ground to tread. One of the reasons we have the legal system that we have is because of that tremendous range of moral expectations. It's supposed to provide something that, while it does not completely satisfy anyone's moral expectations, neither does it completely ignore anyone's moral expectations; a massive compromise. It seems, however, that more and more people are looking to the Executive and Legislative branches for justice than they are looking to the Judicial branch, and that worries me. I say that it is treacherous ground, and that it worries me, because it seems to me that it is a departure from the principles on which this country was intended to be run. We seem to be making this change blindly, without consideration of the consequences. Perhaps the current system is not working. Perhaps this is the best thing to do in the long run. But I cannot believe that it will lead to a more healthy or fulfilled country if we do it in a headlong rush.

Bah. I was all set to try to make some grand point about how, if you want to see people brought to justice, you have to change the laws so that they actually match up with your idea of what justice would look like, but then I got all sidetracked. Much like if you want a computer program to perform a certain operation for you then you must make sure that it is designed to correctly perform that operation, if you want to see justice served then you must have in place a legal system and laws that are capable of producing your idea of justice.

Divided, we are falling. Now, I think, it is a matter of whether we fall together... or fall apart.

I'm currently enjoying The Little Schemer as a way to attempt to learn more of the Lisp/Scheme programming paradigm. It's been a useful book for me so far, in that I'm 30 pages in and haven't yet had to stop and go, "Wait, WTF?!"*

( Cut for rambling )

*Actually, looking at it that way, I should try to pick it up and read a single page each day. I'd be farther along now if I had done it that way... ~wry grin~

**Obligatory reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. It's been awhile since I read it, but I think that he was trying to take it one step further: that the physical world we observe is due to something else, like the two-dimensional shadows cast on a cave wall by three-dimensional objects with a light behind them. Whether he explicitly said so or not, the physical world that we perceive might well be such a shadow of what we call mathematics.

***L-mode is what I'm using to refer to the more logical/linguistic operations of the brain (also known as "left brained", though my understanding is that term contains implications that aren't entirely accurate).

****~blink~ I think I just reduced Understanding to Graph Theory. Or at least I made a claim of some kind of analog between the two.

Semi-random thoughts on our political process. Many of our politicians seem to like trying to convince people of a certain thing (often that something-or-other unpleasant was because of someone other than them).

I'm pretty sure that we don't have a good enough grasp of the principles of causality to actually say how much impact any one factor has, and so pretty much anyone can spin an event to support their position. See, for example, "The economy is collapsing because we didn't have enough government regulation" vs. "The economy is collapsing because we had too much government regulation"

So I suspect that it is less about how many people they can convince to come over to their position as it is about how many people they can find who want to believe the same thing and are looking for facts to support those beliefs.

Wanting to believe (or believing) something is an incredibly powerful thing. It's also a dangerous thing, I think, because it seems that people are often willing to suspend their powers of critical thinking when offered some bit of evidence--either for or against--whatever thing they want to believe. If offered something flimsy that supports their belief, they won't poke at it too hard for fear of causing it to fall down and their beliefs to be dashed. If offered something sturdy that undermines their belief, they won't poke at it too hard for fear of discovering how sturdy it really is, and instead look for ways to denounce it as fraud, phony, untrue--again, because they want so badly for their beliefs not to be dashed.

This is certainly not true for all people all of the time. I suspect it is not even true for any person all of the time. But at the same time, I also suspect that it is true for most people most of the time, and also that it is true for all people at least now and then.

... This has the potential to be a very twisty road to pursue.

Brief thoughts here, possibly elaborated later or in response to comments if they jar something loose in my mind...

The feeling that I am understood doesn't happen as a direct result of me talking.

It happens as a direct result of someone else talking.

Their talking can be in response to something that I've just said or done, or it can be from someone that I've never met before in my life. It can be from someone that I still haven't met, for example someone on TV or the radio.

Essentially, I feel like someone understands me (or would understand me, which currently seems like a very fine hair to split) when they say the same thing about something that I would say about that something.

If this is how it works for most people, then I think I may have just grokked an important chunk of persuasive speaking, one with vaguely disturbing implications that I'll hopefully poke more at later.

Have been doing a lot of work in the way of attempted brain hacking lately. ~wry~ It is frustrating when it feels like it isn't sticking, but it helps to remind myself that these behaviors and views that I am trying to now change have had years and years of development, cultivation, and reinforcement.

One big realization that I don't think had really sunk in earlier: I've been feeling lonely and disconnected and overwhelmed for the past few months, and it seems to be getting worse. Well, let's see, what changed about the time that this started? Oh! ( I pulled up and made the biggest move that I have made in the past four years of living on this coast! )

The brainloop tapes are not me.

It would probably serve me best if I did not identify with them (I hereby give myself permission to not do so).

It would also serve me well to be gentle with myself if I don't always catch myself in time to prevent identifying with them.

Had some conversation about community with gipsieee over the weekend, and came to some conclusions that, while I don't particularly like them, I think I can probably live with them. Conclusions may be too strong a word. Stopping point from which I can look further later might be better ^_^

( More behind the cut )

I deserve friends who like me for me.

Seems like it'd be obvious, doesn't it? Regardless, it isn't. Or at least hasn't been; I had it pointed out to me last week by way of an extremely well-placed clue-by-four strike. Along with a few other corollary-type things, ( which are what really matter. )