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Showing posts from March, 2010

Better Uses of my Time

I have good auditory comprehension, which speaks highly of me as a listener (if my attention is engaged). I've noticed there is a pattern how I remember stories alot better when there are motives and personalities involved. When they are real people, my memory seems to work much better. I tend to visualize very strongly the descriptions of the quirks and quickly replay a bunch of situations where that quirk can be applied or seen other than the given example. So I can listen, how about read? I think I fall within the average of 200 words per minute. I remember reading game of thrones and it took me around 30hours to finish 700 pages with really bad comprehension. After finishing it and going to the forums I missed out in so many clues. Even in my daily reading, I have to look at a line at least twice before being certain of what I read. Well, I've read up on speed reading and its pretty fishy for me. Particularly, if it IS such a successful strategy why is it that it has not be

Great Minds are Greater than you think

Reading up on legacies of great economists and I realized how often such great minds put both sides of the arguments in their works. That got me thinking of how confirmation bias really makes people interpret the same work so differently. Imagine the works of Marx and Smith, both presenting counter arguments for their primary ideas. Remembering how Confirmation Bias polarizes strong convictions, it is no surprise that the Intellectual Honesty these men has put into their work to present as impartial a picture possible has worked against them. Of course controlling knowledge is something very difficult to do, in fact the more you control it, by virtues of supply and demand, the more you increase its value to the emotional respondent. Its quite a learning experience worth contemplating how much complexity affects us.

Race Bending is disturbing me

The Last Airbender Trailer is leaving me disturbed. If they made the Entire cast white I don't mind, but all dressing characters as non-whites is kinda disturbing. I mean, think about it. If race didn't matter and the skill of the actor did, then the Fire Nation wouldn't be all Indian. In fact, there would be a blind eye to race and we just seperated people by their cultural costumes. Instead, you have this freakishly inconsistent distribution. If they had a hard time getting an asian kid that can do the stunts, they can always CGI it, they did it in the trailer anyway. So what is the point? So I will write a story inspired by 19C Wild Western America with all visuals and fantasy that comes with it, and populate it with People who cannot pass off visually as that culture. Like, making them all Filipinos. What would be REALLY inconsistent is keeping all the "Blacks" Blacks and not an analog: like uneducated filipinos. Its really a WTF? I know M. Night has been a bi

Game Theory Lecture

I'm going to give a lecture on Game Theory. I have to say, I'm not used to not getting an feel of an audience when speaking in public. I know I can run my mouth off about something, but lately I've been more aware of my redundancies more and more often and that has made me reconsidered my approach. Its been a long while since I've given a lecture and spoken in public, and I don't get enough practice. Truth is, I'm starting from scratch and the only public speaking skills I will have to draw from is my Game Mastering. Oh well, I'll spend friday writing it all out. Hopefully I can have it all set up by sat. Weird how I got to be into game theory. I came from being a career GM.

My own Intollerance

beware of Greeks bearing Gifts. beware of those quick to dehumanize opponents I'm guilty of dehumanizing Psychopaths. I don't consider them human, particularly when they are pretty hard wired to get what they want at all costs. Although after reading the Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins, I don't exactly define humans in the same way as I used to. If everything is a mutation, then naming convention is just a way to track a set of "normally" occurring traits or mutations. When you realize psychopaths are neurologically different yet functional, you have something that acts in many ways human but is capable of great destruction and cannot be rehabilitated. Its like someone turning into the Undead in a horror movie: they may act human but they are not and they want something from you. So I don't consider Psychopaths Human. Does voluntarily discriminating against a psychopaths unlawful? Bias in race and gender I can understand and of course I don't condone. Ev

The complications of being an Atheist in the Philippines

School is one of the things that piss me off about living in the medieval institutions of the Philippines. I find the institutions medieval, while I find the masses pretty blameless. It costs (my wife hates it when I give the actual prices, she says its arrogant) a year for Fountain International. STI has some high schools and there are good independent and secular schools like Creative Learning in Pasig that goes up to grade 6 (i think). If I was sure I will have enough free time I don't mind taking care of education of my kid personally. Thats what my grandfather did for me, and the ability to explain complex ideas to children is always a good exercise if you have understood it well and are able to communicate with someone physiologically different (neurologically speaking). My masters had a professor requiring us to answer case studies with song, origami, and collages. After that experience I basically said "screw this" and didn't continue. Religion has really dea

Confused and Too many thoughts on my plate

I'm studying up on Philosophy of Science. Basically it is trying to define science in order to differentiate it from pseudo sciences and looking for a true method in scientific studies. Its really hard to follow and I can't keep up with the names: Kuhn, Logical Positivism, Popper, Firerobin, etc... I get what its saying and I understand the value of all the big problems. Thankfully I've come from a strategic background. in the economy of attention, it is best to go with what has worked best within our limited rational boundaries: the Pragmatic Philosophy. Pragmatic Philo is basically: go with what works. Of course, once you're familiar with the other Philos, you have more effective grasp of knowing the limitations and strengths of one problem solving method over another so as to allow you to "switch" to what suits the situation best. I feel like its a very round about way of going back to my personal philo that has rather simple principle governing it, namely