24 January 2007

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens...for those of you who knows no tomorrow.



Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,
Before the tides of passion cool within you,
For those of you who know no tomorrow.

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before his hands take up his boat,
Before the flush of his cheeks fades,
For those of you who will never return here.

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before the boat drifts away on the waves,
Before the hand resting on your shoulder becomes frail,
For those who will never be seen here again.

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before the raven tresses begin to fade,
Before the flame in your hearts flicker and die,
For those to whom today will never return.

ゴンドラの唄(Gondora no Uta) Song of the Gondola
Composed by Shimpei Nakayama, lyrics by Isamu Yoshii
Link


Ikiru could be my best loved movie. More on this later.

12 January 2007

Is metaphysics possible?

In metaphysics, we did Aristotle's statement:
"There is a science which takes up the theory of being as being and of what "to be" means, taken by itself." -Metaphysics, Book Gamma, section 1
We talked about the presupposition that the structure of our language reflects the structure of our thinking, and that the structure of thinking reflects the structure of reality and we were tasked to post an answer to this question:
What reason do we have to believe that the structure of language and thought reflect a 'structure of reality'? If there is no such correlation, or if we cannot prove that there is, does that mean metaphysics is impossible? If this is the case, there is a further question. If mathematics is a language the structure of which reflects that of a certain category of thought, if physics and the natural sciences depend heavily on mathematics (as they seem to), does the hypothesis that there is no correlation between language and thought on the one hand, and the structure of reality on the other, also render the natural sciences impossible? Or is there a difference between these sciences, and a 'science of being qua being' that makes a difference here?

I have no idea.
Anyway, This is my post:

The relationship of thought and language is, in itself, a sticky chicken and egg dilemma without the added complication of them reflecting the ‘structure of reality’.

I think what we can all agree on is that language has evolved to allow us to communicate with each other and each of our languages is influenced by our different culture. Take for example, the old saying that Eskimos has 100 words for snow. Well, if you live in a place where you have an urgent need to know the different between “snow that is melting”, “snow that is moving”, and “snow that is going to kill us”, it make sense to have a large vocabulary for snow.

Taken in this sense, language is simply a toolbox of labels that we use to share information. It doesn’t really matters what colour the screwdriver is, as long as it gets the job done. Shakespeare seems to agree when he wrote “A rose by any other name, will smell just as sweet.”

But now the chicken and egg game has 2 different players, namely thought and reality. What evidence do we have that our thought structure reflects or is even capable of comprehending reality? Take for example, Einstein’s general theory of relativity, it turns out that space and time are variable and interchangeable. The faster you go, the slower time goes for you, and matter causes a “dent” in space-time? Now these are really weird ideas, and honestly, it’s not a concept you can explain and understand using words.

But the fact that this theory and many others have been discovered shows that our minds can comprehend the working of nature that we don’t even have words or pervious knowledge of. And the fact that this knowledge has proven true over repeated experiments is a clear sign that our understanding of the universe is ever increasing and evolving.

Professor Richard Dawkins sums up my point beautifully with his “middle earth” analogy. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4676751.stm)

Our brains had evolved to help us survive within the scale and orders of magnitude within which we exist, said Professor Dawkins. We think that rocks and crystals are solid when in fact they were made up mostly of spaces in between atoms, he argued.

"Are there things about the Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle, ungraspable in any mind, however superior?" he asked. “Successive generations have come to terms with the increasing queerness of the Universe."

"Middle world is the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or very large." He mused that perhaps children should be given computer games to play with that familiarise them with quantum physics concepts.

Human beings need some methods of making sense of this huge world that lies outside the narrow range of reality that we are used to seeing; which brings us to the problem of mathematics and reality. Let me share my view of mathematics and why it does not render knowledge impossible.

Personally, I’m torn between the Platonist views that these objects do exist - just not as part of the physical universe, but as part of a separate universe of abstract objects; and that Mathematics is simply a story with certain constraints, written by human, just like in Sherlock Holmes.

My personal view is that universal ‘laws’ (for a lack of a better word), certainly exist. Like 1+1=2 and so on. So the laws are real and plentiful. We can observe these laws in action in our realm of reality, through experiments and so on.

Now mathematics is simply another toolbox, constructed as a proxy, for us to interact with and comprehend these “laws”. As they as modelled and build from the “laws” that we know of from experiences, they naturally reflect reality. In fact, their sole purpose is to reflect reality in a way we could understand.

If you look at the history of mathematics, we have constantly build upon the know rules and invented new methods of doing things. Mathematics is in essence a toolbox that has been put together by us who need to solve certain problems. If we came across a problem that we cannot solve with our current tools, we upgrade the toolbox, take for example, algebra.

Taken in this context, there seems to be no conflict between the “laws” of nature and the laws of mathematics. Our comprehensions of nature shape our rules of mathematics.

Yah, I was making it up as I go along.

7 January 2007

Momofuku Ando (1910-2007)


News Link

"peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat"
Yes, I love instant noodles.
--

6 January 2007

Feng Shui taught in our tertiary institution

I was appalled and speechless when I chanced upon this article published in November 2006.
"Using science to learn about Feng Shui" My Paper, 28 Nov 06, (c) 2006 Singapore Press Holdings Limited.
Basically it's singing praises for a "Basic Science of Feng Shui" course offered at Singapore Polytechnic for the past 8 years. I cannot imagine why an educational institute with any credibility will want to be associated with this pseudoscience. I mean how low can you get to teach feng shui?

The feng shui people was of course advertising that their wisdom is good enough to be certified by a national polytechnic.
"first Feng Shui Master to offer training and education in Feng Shui through a nationally accredited tertiary institution."
As if this would give them any credibility.

Please, let us reason. Feng shui is the magical notion that luck, wealth, health and so on can be controlled by moving furniture, wearing a certain colour, carrying an amulet and sleeping in certain direction. It contains astrology, numerology, gemancy. It is by any reasonable definition, a superstitious.

As much as the believers would want you to believe, feng shui is not science. Let's ask a simple question. You claim all these wonderful and
mystical knowledge that allows you to manipulate energy and possibly fate, and bring happiness and joy to everyone you meet. So the question is: "What evidences do you have that the world actually works that way?" If you are a reasonable and intelligent person, you would see that feng shui could not be proved. Do be a science, you need to be able to produce consistence and measurable results in controlled experiments. You can't just walk around and say it's true because I say so, and I have a nice suit and a fancy compass. What is happening here is that we are giving the feng shui masters a "magic check". He or she can say anything and give any advices and never be wrong. Who's going to correct them?
It's magic.

And the that's chi. You have to believe in chi if you do feng shui, because you are after all, moving chi around. Some call it energy, some call it vibration, whatever, you got to do chi, or the game's is up. It's the “energy” word that gives the whole thing a flavor of science. "Energy is a scientific thing right? It got to be science if you involve energy." My question is still the same, "so prove it". This mysterious energy that you find in all things (master yoda would make a fine feng shui consultant by the way), could you measure it? Could you detect it in any way? No? Well, then its not science, it's magic. Now many feng shui people would at this point, starts blabbing about how you can't detect this energy but you can see its effect on things...blah blah blah. Ok, next logical question. Can this mysterious energy of yours have any real effect on the physical world? Yes? Well, if it has an effect on the measurable physical world, then why can't we detect it? That's illogical. Oh right, feng shui doesn't need logic, it's magic.

I wanted to list down a couple of logical fallacies on feng shui. Logical fallacies are basically
false or incorrect logical principle that makes an augment invalid. (Brorrowed shamlessly from the skeptics' guide to the universe and Practical skepticism)
  1. argument from ignorance, we can't prove that it isn't true. We can't prove that feng shui doesn't happen therefore feng shui is real. It's impossible to disprove a negative. There are so many things that can't be disprove, I could be a alien. You can't disprove that.

  2. argument from authority, there's why the suit and funny clothes are important. It's ture because the master says it's true.

  3. argument from personal incredulity, I can't explain or understand this, therefore it's true.

  4. false Continuum, there is a fuzzy line between science and this, therefore they are really the same thing.

  5. Inconsistency, chi effects the world we live in, but we can't see or measure this effect.

  6. "Special pleading, or ad-hoc reasoning This is a subtle fallacy which is often difficult to recognize. In essence, it is the arbitrary introduction of new elements into an argument in order to fix them so that they appear valid. A good example of this is the ad-hoc dismissal of negative test results. For example, one might point out that ESP has never been demonstrated under adequate test conditions, therefore ESP is not a genuine phenomenon. Defenders of ESP have attempted to counter this argument by introducing the arbitrary premise that ESP does not work in the presence of skeptics. This fallacy is often taken to ridiculous extremes, and more and more bizarre ad hoc elements are added to explain experimental failures or logical inconsistencies."

  7. appeal to popularity, many people believe this, therefore it's true.

  8. argument from age, it's got to be good because it is traditional or has been around for a long time.

  9. Equivocation is the use of more than one definition of a word or phrase so that a faulty conclusion is reached. Think energy, chi, energy fields.

  10. Galileo Gambit where the writer compares herself (or whoever she is supporting) to some famous person, noting some alleged similarity. "They didn't believe Galileo, and now they didn't believe me."

  11. Scare tactics, threatened people with some undesirable consequence, ie bad luck.

Feng Shui is bunk.

The way I see it, there are people that genuinely believe in feng shui and its magical effects and they really wish to use it to help people. These true believers are sad, but forgivable. But then there are some who sees it as nothing more as a scam to get money from people. It's easy when there is no clear guage to what feng shui is. False hope has always been in demand.

To depress me even more about the state of the world,
Motorola patented a Feng Shui measuring phone. [Link]


Our evolutionary direction?

I was walking back home when an idea struck me (got to be careful, those buggers are everywhere) that human evolution may ceased to be influenced by nature selection. With all our break through in medical sciences and our mastery of our environment, we have transcend the limitation of nature. All the conditions and circumstances that have driven our evolution has ceased to be applicable to us. Nature selection for human has reached a new epoch. What will be the driving factors in the next phrase of human evolution?

In other words, what factors will give one human advantages over another in passing on his or her genes to future generations?

Is it looks? Wealth? Social Classes? Intelligence? Or maybe, has human overcome our age-old instinct to reproduces as many copies of our genes as possible? After all, sex is now more for enjoyment than reproduction. If so, how will human change? Will we instead of improving, fall back down a slippery slop, since there are no evolutionary pressures?

I don't really have any answers here, I'm just recording down what I'm thinking about.

Link: Is human evolution finally over?
--

5 January 2007

Love's Philosophy

By Percy Bysshe Shelly:
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle --
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea --
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

This poem (beautiful by the way) and the last 2 movies I watched on my TV, Love Actually and You got Mail got me thinking about "Love" as a concept. Penn and Teller's Bullshit! have a show on The Business of Love, watch it here:



We are all familiar with shows with the "they live happily ever after" endings. It's always "they" isn't it? It seems that a single "he" or "she" could not live as happily as a "they". With all this "love at first sight" and "riding off into the sunset", could we have been taken for a ride? Does the real world really works that way?

In the study of Sociology, we know that social conditioning can have a tremendous impact on people's behavior. We can predict at what age a person of a certain gender and social upbringing would want to get married, how many kids he or she would like and even what sort of person he or she is likely to marry. "Love" in this sense seems to be a very socially constructed arrangement. For example monogamy, which is not always the norm, has been taken to be a sign or criterion of "true love". Not too long ago, in a different culture setting, this Hollywood's ending would have little to do with one's "love" for a person.

"What is love" has always been a difficult question to answer, and is therefore a perfect philosophical question. Perhaps we could examine it using evolution, where individuals find that having a fixed partner have an added advantage in the division of labour. We can see the same partnership in countless animals such as lions, penguins , various mammals, and so on. Can their partnership be considered "love"? Could our "love" simply be a romanticised concept of choosing an advantageous partner to pass on our genes?

Does "Love" somehow involves the "Soul" or is it simply a chemical change in the brain?

Could we be spending a tremendous amount of time and effort chasing after something that doesn't exist in the first place?
--

3 January 2007

Pirates and Emperor

Well Sadam Hussein kicked the bucket, thanks to his old friend Uncle Sam. Is oil the reason?


History of Oil: WWI, Iraq war...



There are crimes so big, there are no law against them.