Richard Taylor's glow worm

Each dot of light identifies an ugly worm, whose luminous tail is meant to attract insects from the surrounding darkness. As from time to time one of these insects draws near it becomes entangled in a sticky thread lowered by the worm, and is eaten. These goes on month after month, the blind worm lying there in the barren stillness waiting to entrap an occasional bit of nourishment that will only sustain it to another bit of nourishment until... Until what? What great thing awaits all this long repetitious effort and makes it worthwhile? Really nothing. The larva just transforms itself finally into a tiny winged adult that lacks even mouth parts to feed and lives only a day or two. These adults, as soon as they have mated and laid eggs, are themselves caught in the threads and are devoured by the cannibalistic worms, often without having ventured into the day, the only point of their existence having now been fulfilled. This has been going on for millions of years, and to no other end other than that the same meaningless cycle may continue for another millions of years.

All the living things present essentially the same spectacle...One is led to wonder what the point of it all is, with what great triumph this ceaseless effort, repeating itself through millions of years, might finally culminate, and why it should go on and on and on for so long, accomplishing nothing, getting nowhere. But then one realizes that there is no point to it all, that it really culminates in nothing, that each of these cycles, so filled with toil, is to be followed only by more of the same. The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but life itself.

Friedrich Nietzsche - quotes

The greatest weight.—

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you:

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!" If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you; the question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more, and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
--

A traveler, who had visited many lands and peoples and seen several of the earth's continents, was asked what quality in men he had found everywhere. He said: they tend to be lazy.
To others, it seems that he should have said, more rightly and significantly: they are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions. At bottom every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no outlandish coincidence will shake together, a second time, such a marvelously variegated multiplicity into unity as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience—why?
For fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Shamefacedness, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For most it is idleness, inertia, in short that tendency to laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than fearful, and fear most of all the burdensome nuisance of absolute honesty and nakedness.
Artists alone hate this lazy procession in borrowed manners and left-over opinions and they reveal everyone's secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare to show us man as he is, unique even unto each move of his muscles; even more, that by strictly in consequence of this uniqueness, he is beautiful and worth regarding, new and incredible, as every work of nature, and never boring. When the great thinker despises human beings, he despises their laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like factory goods, indifferent, unworthy to be associated with or instructed.
Human beings who do not want to belong to the mass need only to stop being comfortable; follow their conscience, which cries out: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, and desiring, that isn't you at all."
Every youthful soul hears this call day and night and trembles at it; for it has a premonition of its eternally fated lot of happiness, when it contemplates its true liberation: a happiness it can never attain to, so long as it lies in chains of fear and convention. And how desolate and senseless life can be without this liberation! There is no more unpleasant and adverse a creature in this world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks peers left and right, squinting behind him and all about. In the end, one cannot come to grips with such a man, since he is all exterior without a core; befallen, bedaubed, baggy robes, a trimmed ghost that cannot provoke even fear and certainly not pity.
--

The madman.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried. "I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?—Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives,—who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed,—and whoever is born after us, for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto!"
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners: they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves!"— It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo . Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

Groundhog Day

I just did a paper on Groundhog Day. If you haven't seen it, you really should. It's a 1993 comedy film starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. It's deeply philosophical (but then all good movies are), and religious people love it( one reason is that it contains speck of wisdom from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity). It's a great feel-good comedy and quite a decent romantic film. It's deep and meditative without getting preachy.

Phil, played by actor Bill Murray is trapped inside a
time loop in the small town of Punxsutawney while covering the annual Groundhog Day festival. Every morning he wakes up in the same bed and it’s always February the second. He has to relive the entire day, again and again, apparently without end.

Here's my paper for those of you who are interested:[pdf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/


14th May 2007: Hey I got an A for this paper. Althought prof. commented that the language is "somewhat rough". I really got to work on my english this vacation.

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.

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]

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?
--

What is Philosophy?

For those who don't know, I have decided to major in philosophy for my undergrad studies in NUS. I have encouraged several reactions whenever I told someone about this; people has it mixed up with Psychology, there is the usual "then I better not talk with you again, I don't want to be confessed" respond, the nice and polite "what is philosophy?" and of course the pragmatic "what are you going to do after gradation?" Philosophy seems to equal "cheeminology" for many people who are not expose to the subject, and who can blame them? The common imagination of philosophy seems to be Hollywood's middle-aged, slightly breaded, absent-minded man pacing around the common room of Cambridge, occasionally staring dreamily into space.

I too have thought that philosophy is lofty ideas and abstract concepts completely out of touch with reality, and lacking any practical value. It was not too long ago, at the beginning of the semester in fact, where I left the philosophical department with the impression, well:"These weird people are clueless about the real world, and possible wasting their life." I signed up for the introductory module, just for fun (like everything I do), and quite evidently, changed my view. I guess I can safely say here that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or at lease, a misleading thing.

So I attempt here to record down, what (I feel) is philosophy. What is philosophy is actually a much harder question that people expect. it's like my own dilemma of answering: "What is Aikido?" A standard rigid answer like "Aikido is a graceful and gentle martial arts" doesn't seem to cut it, the collection of words doesn't tell the asker anything he or she doesn't know.

I could point to famous philosophers and points to the writing of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume Kant; but that is not very helpful, especially for those who are unfamiliar with philosophy. And I feel this approach is not very honest, after all philosophy is everywhere you care to look.

The root word came from Greek, and means "Love of Wisdom". If I have to use one word to describe philosophy, I would use: "Question" (some people would use "nonsense"). To me, philosophy is the art of questioning. A quest I would say. Using logical argument, an integrated part of philosophy, it is the examination of ideas and beliefs that most people take for granted.

The diversity of philosophy is really mind boggling. From environmental philosophy, to philosophy of justice, moral, politics, life, mind, film, science, arts, government, religion...the list is endless. The recent court case of the teenager who was surfing on his neighbour's wifi connection has gotten Singaporean talking. He could have been sentenced to a maximum of 3 years in jail. Is it thief? What is stolen? Whose's fault is it? The owner for not securing the connection? If your sprinkler waters the garden of your neighbour, could you say your neighbour is stealing water from you? Is the law fair? Should laws be fair? Could laws be fair? These are questions that arise from a simple news article. Many questions like abortion, right of mothers? Simulated organism, alive? Death penalty, should we? These are questions that should, at the very lease, be considered very seriously.

But why? What's the point? It has been argued that there is no point in studying philosophy as all philosophy ever do is sit around quibbling over the meaning of words. Ancients problems since the time of Plato are still unanswered, and philosophers seems to be uncovering more problems everyday. Job security maybe but they never seem to reach any conclusions of any importance and their contribution to society is non-existent.

Meno has the same thing to say about Socrates around 400 B.C.

Meno: Socrates, even before I met you, I heard others talk about how you are always completely perplexed about everything, and how you drag everyone else down into the same pit of perplexity. And now here we are. I think you have been bewitching and enchanting me. You've cast some spell over me, so now I'm completely at a loss. In fact, if you don't mind my making a bit of a joke, I think you're very like a stingray - that strange flat fish that paralyses anyone who approaches and touches it - and not just in that way. You look like one, too.

Nigel Warburnton discuss in his book Basic Philosophy that:

"Start to question the fundamental assumptions of our lives could be dangerous, we might end up feeling unable to do anything, paralysed by questioning too much."

But humans, you and me, are born questioners. By that fact, all kids are great philosophers. Our young questioning mind holds the world in awe. Life was a series of questions, often followed by bad answers. For example, the physicist Richard Feynman liked to tell a story about how when he was a little kid, he asked his father, "Why do things fall. As an adult, he praised his father for answering, "Nobody knows why things fall. It’s a deep mystery, and the smartest people in the world don't know the basic reason for it." Contrast that with the average person’s off-the-cuff answer, "Oh, it’s because of gravity." (http://www.faqs.org/docs/Newtonian/Newtonian_77.htm)

Thinking back, many of the questions that I had as a child has not been answered, and more has emerged as I live my life. If has been said that an unexamined life is not worth living, no? It is my belief that for many people, it takes too much effort or too disturbing to ask ourselves such questions. Philosophy provides a fantastic platform to examine these questions.

I'm going to borrow an example here from BBC News:

One day, you wake up in hospital. In the nearby bed lies a world famous violinist who is connected to you with various tubes and machines.

To your horror, you discover that you have been kidnapped by the Music Appreciation Society. Aware of the maestro's impending death, they hooked you up to the violinist.

If you stay in the hospital bed, connected to the violinist, he will be totally cured in nine months. You are unlikely to suffer harm. No one else can save him. Do you have an obligation to stay connected?

The creator of the experiment, Judith Thomson, thinks the answer is "no". It would be generous if you did, she claims, but there is no obligation to stay, even if that means the violinist will die.

So how is this bizarre scenario related to the real world? Thomson used the experiment to show that a pregnant woman need not go to full term with her baby, as long as she had taken reasonable steps to avoid getting pregnant. It is thus a "pro-choice" argument.

The violinist represents the baby, and you - in the hospital bed - play the role of the mother. If you think unhooking yourself from the violinist is acceptable, but aborting an unwanted foetus is not, what are the moral differences between the two cases? In both situations, you could save a person by bearing a great burden for nine months.

I could not tell you how to think or respond in the above situation but I can show you inconsistencies in your thoughts if the 2 answer differ. There may not be an answer, but the question itself have opened new doors to look at the issue and the world.

Can you really solve real problems by thinking about things? Well, Galileo did. Aristotle believed that things fall at different speed based on their weight, and it was held as truth for centuries. Until Galileo extend the concept logically and come to a totally different conclusion:

SIMPLICIO: There can be no doubt but that a particular body ... has a fixed velocity which is determined by nature...

SALVIATI: If then we take two bodies whose natural speeds are different, it is clear that, [according to Aristotle], on uniting the two, the more rapid one will be partly held back by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter. Do you not agree with me
in this opinion.

SIMPLICIO: You are unquestionably right.

SALVIATI: But if this is true, and if a large stone moves with a speed of, say, eight [unspecified units] while a smaller moves with a speed of four, then when they are united, the system will move with a speed less than eight; but the two stones when tied together make a stone larger than that which before moved with a speed of eight. Hence the heavier body moves with less speed than the lighter; an effect which is contrary to your supposition. Thus you see how, from your assumption that the heavier body moves more rapidly than the lighter one, I infer that the heavier body moves more slowly.
[tr. Crew and De Salvio]

Stories have it that Galileo never saw the need to test his conclusion by dropping 2 balls from the tower of Pairs.

Philosophy severs at least another function by detecting bullshit. There are so many inconsistencies and ridiculous nonsense in the world that someone must say, "hang on, that doesn't sound right."

Lastly, I want to end by saying that everyone, whether you realises it or not, is a philosopher. Almost everyday, at so point, everyone engages in philosophical thoughts. Just like what my philosophy professor told us: "philosophy is not a thing that flourishes only in artificial environments ... like philosophy departments. No, it’s a stubborn, hardy weed that springs up just about everywhere you might care to look...".

Come for the answer, stay for the questions.

P/S: "The value of philosophy" by Bertand Russell makes the point better than I ever could. See it here: http://skepdic.com/russell.html

Arguments

I'm sorry that I have had a few heated discussion with some friends, on a few occasions a couple of weeks before. As usual , I had held firmly onto my beliefs.

In my mind, I'm like:

My views are so clear, they make so much sense, why can't everyone see it? This is so obvious. Can't anyone else see it? You must be stupid not to see it!

I'm sure you can all relate to this.

Well, I'm a skeptic. A skeptic, and a really big one. I like to joke that if you see a ghost, what is the first thing you should do?
Ans: Drink water. You are hallucinating due to dehydration.(Then try to interview the ghost.)

It really took me a long time to understand that people are different. A hundred people will have a hundred views. You have no idea how relieve I'm, when I finally realise this. I own all that I could have offenced, an apology.

We all have our own views, our own tendencies, our own ways of viewing and relating to our world. It's like standing in different parts of a room and looking, the room looks different from different angles.

So where does all the views come from?
We are shaped by our thoughts, experiences, our likes and dislikes. We see what we want to see, and block what we don't want to see. We prejudge the world.

More importantly, how do we know which view is right?
How do you know, what is true? What is right? Human are notoriety good at bending reality.
I prefer a skeptic outlook base on facts, proof, Science, razor sharp logic and iron hard common sense.

I cannot guarantee that I will not disagree with people in the future, in fact given the bullshit I've been reading about, that is inevitable. I can only say I'll be doing it more gracefully.

Lastly a beautiful story:

The Chicken and the Duck
A newly married couple went for a walk together in Bishan Park one fine day after dinner. They were having such an enjoyable time together until they heard a sound in the distance: "Quack!
Quack!"

"Listen," said the wife, "That must be a chicken."
"No, no. That was a duck," said the husband.
"No, I'm sure that was a chicken," she said.
"Impossible. Chickens go `Cock-a-doodle-do', ducks go
`Quack! Quack!' That's a duck, darling," he said, with the first signs of irritation. "Quack! Quack!" it went again.
"See! It's a duck," he said.
"No dear. That's a chicken. I'm positive," she
asserted, digging in her heels.
"Listen wife! That is a duck. D-U-C-K, duck! Got it?" he said angrily.
"But it's a chicken," she protested.
"It's a blooming duck, you, you..."

And it went "Quack! Quack!" again before he said something he oughtn't. The wife was almost in tears. "But it's a chicken."
The husband saw the tears welling up in his wife's eyes and, at last, remembered why he had married her. His face softened and he said gently, "Sorry, darling. I think you must be right. That is a chicken."

"Thank you, darling," she said and squeezed his hand.
"Quack! Quack!" came the sound through the woods, as they
continued their walk together in love.

The point of the story that the husband finally awakened to was, who cares whether it is a chicken or a duck? What was much more important was their harmony together, that they could enjoy their walk on such a fine summer's evening. How many marriages and relationships are broken over unimportant matters? How many divorces cite "chicken or duck" stuff in the petition papers?

When we understand this story, we will remember our priorities. The marriage is more important than being right about whether it is a chicken or a duck. Anyway, how many times have we been absolutely, certainly and positively convinced we are right, only to find out we were wrong later? Who knows? That could have been a genetically
modified chicken made to sound like a duck!

* Adapted from <Opening the Door of Your Heart> by Ajahn Brahm, Abbott of Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia.

Controversial Issues

I have been occupied with life in general lately, with NUS application, ballooning activities, keeping up with the news and elections issues.

I have been visiting quite a few political blog and sites lately, will post them up soon and also update my links. They offer refreshing point of views which offer my mind more food for thoughts. I visited a few rally sites during the election period, and was "surprised" by the crowd. I guess this just show I don't REALLY understand the society I live in. More room for improvement here.

I have also developed a craving or habit of discussing highly controversial issues, i.e: evolution, is killing ever justifiable, is war ever justifiable, homosexuality, politics, stem cell research, abortion, nuclear development, global warming...ect

Guess I'm so use to bounding ideas and auguring with a few people that I've come to expect eveyone to discuss things the same way. I may be lossing friends this way, but I just can't seem to resist the chance to hone my thinking/auguring skills.

Oh well, what can I say? Just like what I keep telling everyone, young people should have a little fire inside them. A desire to change the world, an anger to right injustice.

And for heaven sake, No dogma! One of my favorite zen riddle goes like this:

If you see the Buddha coming down the road, what should you do?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Kill the Buddha.

Quite a surprising respond for such a peaceful religion. Can you catch it?


p/s: On a side note, I'll be going on In-Camp Training the whole of next week and will be back for a balloon event for the girl guides' carvinal on Sat.

William Blake, balloons(again), and the forever to do list

Stumbled across the works of William Blake, a 17th century poet, painter and printmaker. Very interesting and thoughtful verse. Example:

'The hand of Vengeance found the bed
To which the purple tyrant fled;
The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's head
And became a tyrant in his stead.'

How often we do the very things we disapprove of, and become the very persons we dislike.

In my personal life, lots of chores and tasks to finish and in work, even more so. Friends have commented that I carry an ugly frown where ever I go. Gave up trying to finish work, instead adopt a guerrilla attitude.

Jul asked me about doing balloon sculpting for this year charity walk. Finally something to spark up my life. I was getting bored.

Have a few dinner appointment coming up.

Piss off at work by an injustice (again), there is really something very wrong and unfair about the way we do things, sigh, if only the voters know. Seems like I'm making enemies left, right, center; our unofficial motto stilly stands: Untill we are good, at least try to look good.

Got my permanent offer today, considering.

Too tire to string sentences together.

No news from the U yet. W'll see how it goes.

Rhinoceros!

A tree is either growing, or it's dying. Just like us really.
The past one month I have taken on more work scoop and responsibility. Mainly due to the high turn over rate at my department. Very sad to see so many good friends leaving. It's beginning to seem like that the only proof of your ability is to resign. I have to say that the stress is getting to me, plainly, I can't breath there.

frankly, I don't agree with some of the things my org is doing and the ways we are doing it; And the people, oh the people, it only I can fire all of them. My inability to bring do anything about it, added by addition work load is killing me.

Looking back, I use to attack life with such energy. I enjoyed work, had dreams and wild ideas(being a masseur?), excised, aikido, sculpted balloons, took courses.
Now, I can barely get out of bed, hasn't being to aikido for like forever, can't sculpt a dog to save my life, and worst, have this really nasty temper and carries a frown wherever I go.

I need an exit, fast.

Being taking some personality test online(ask me how to get free reports from tickle.com!) and considering applying for U.

p/s: A friend who resigned, told me about a French play call: "rhinoceros", about a town where everyone is slowing turning into a rhinoceros, except for one person. I feel like that sometime.

What if

What if North Korea have nuclear weapons?
What if we can download beheading videos on the net?
What if bombs go off around the world nearly everyday?
What if Taiwan has cruise missile to hit Shanghai?
What if China goes to war?
What if an eye for an eye make everyone blind?
What if the food we eat are no longer safe?
What if every week 19,231 people commit suicide?
What if every week 46,154 people die of Aids?
What if every week 384,615 people starve to death?
What if there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet?
What if 6% of the world own 59% of it?
What if 41% live without basic sanitation?
What if 14% can't read?
What if 47% live on US$ 2.00 per day or less?
What if poverty forces 100 million children to live on the street?
What if you keep your food in a refrigerator, your clothes in a closet;
What if you have a roof over your head, have a bed to sleep in;
What if you are richer than 75% of the entire world population?
What if Thavara can't go to school because her family can't afford it?
What if health care workers turn peoples away because they have no medicine?
What if Nong who has HIV want to be strong for her son?
What if we can all just get along?

Ha!
Then what?





Alright, now read them again. Slowly.

Dream life

This is freaking me out! Ever had the feeling u have been living in a dream world. Like neo in the matrix? Well i have been sleeping so irregularly and so often that i started having 'normal' dreams. Dreams that i do 'almost' normal things. All my friends appears in my dreams. Well, most of the girls anyway. But guys really do exist. As the border thinned, I have started telling things i want to tell my friends in real life, in my dreams. Then i woke up with confessing memories about what had actually happened in the past. Was that part in a dream? Or did i really said that to him? Weird huh. I do all sorts of things in dreams. Interact with all sorts of people. And i see all the friends i miss in them.

In the past, people believed that we lived on a piece of flat ground. Some ancient civilizations believed that the world was carried on top of a giant turtle. A little while ago, we were told that we live on a globe that spins around a bigger globe. And the whole thing spins around with other stuff that's too vast to comprehend. Add space, and time and gravity to the whole mess and some extra ingredients we don't really know. And that's just 1 universe.

The truth is. And we all know the truth. We live in a world that spins, between our ears.