Tag Archives: philosophy

That Poetical Sense In The Night

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  • Suddenly, the air permeated with poetical sense,
  • and so these lines poured out from me.
  • Whatever they may be,
  • poetical or not, let them be.
  • Perhaps, there was a pinch of philosophical taste to these lines,
  • but they shall be what they be.
  • If there is no heaven,
  • then there must not be a hell!
  • If there is black,
  • then there must be white!
  • If yin isn’t around,
  • yang might be too overwhelming!
  • Men and women are different,
  • yet they seek their common desires!
  • Pleasure, lust, pain, ache, and…
  • everything in between!
  • Men and women are just mere mortals,
  • and yet desires to hatreds they gotta have ‘em all!
  • If there is me,
  • then there is you!
  • When you smile,
  • there I cry.
  • When you cry,
  • there I smile!
  • Men and women,
  • how different are they?
  • His hand is rough and big as a boulder,
  • but her hand is small and pretty as a beautiful leaf.
  • Men and women,
  • how many common desires do they share?
  • The night is late,
  • yet I still linger by.
  • Philosophical thoughts form these lines,
  • but my mind feels so empty!
  • The night has got me good,
  • as sleepy eyes peek at the bright moon, empty head and tired.
  • Perhaps, I will dream of whatever that may be,
  • but I know no dream will last when the sun rises.
  • Perhaps, it’s true that one is not the same as the other,
  • but yet fate has it that one cannot be without the other.
  • Perhaps, I will dream of an eternity of surrealism,
  • then again surrealism might just be that me scooping the moon in the water!
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A Universe Was Formed Out Of Nothingness?

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Krauss at the American Atheists Convention in ...

Image via Wikipedia

Lawrence Krauss, Arizona State University physicist, published a new book with title “A Universe From Nothing.”  Although I haven’t yet read this particular book of his, but I watched a lecture of his through a YouTube video with the same title as his book, and I have to say it was rather fascinating; at times I could only understand half of the things he had said.  Anyhow, if you don’t mind few headache moments, you can watch Lawrence Krauss’s “A Universe From Nothing” lecture right after the break.

The title “A Universe From Nothing” which has been named for both of his book and his lecture which made readily available through a YouTube video in itself is quite mind boggling and fascinating.  Nonetheless, what I refer to is of philosophy and not of exact science which requires experimentation.  On the other hand, I think what Lawrence Krauss had inferred to why a universe from nothing might actually happen is probably backed by certain scientific formulas, experiments and proofs.  Regardless, I still have to wonder is it really that how our universe was formed?  That’s, from nothing that is really something!

Philosophically speaking (i.e., without any real experimentation and mathematical proof), if nothing is actually something, then we still have to wrestle with the idea that there might be a nothing that is actually nothing, and this actual nothing might have been existed before everything.  Another way to phrase this is to ask it in a question.  What is actually nothing?  So, in a sense it’s rather implausible to see a universe could be formed from actual nothing.  As how Lawrence Krauss lectured which you could watch in the YouTube video above, his nothing is something (i.e., matters) as it has a mysterious mass or energy or however he had explained, therefore it was possible for him to see a universe of ours in a current state.  Without this picture, even if the calculation of the eventual sum of all matters that made known to humankind (i.e., protons, neutrons, etc…)  – in total could not have come up with the scale of the universe in which we have witnessed (e.g., measured, weighed, computed) today.  So, his answer was what we thought of nothing is really something after all.

Still, the question which has always lingered in the back of my mind is the kind of nothing which Lawrence Krauss had spoken of might have been created by something in the first place.  In a way, it’s rather implausible if such a scenario is to be probed, not because it might not be possible to do an experiment to probe for such a scenario, although it’s probably impossible to do so with exactness, but it’s also about the philosophical aspect where we have to wonder perhaps the actual nothing might exist.  If the actual nothing isn’t existed in nature ever, it would be an infinite scenario where the nothing we’ve now knew as something, if we’ve believed Lawrence Krauss’s explanation, might always have been created by something, and there was and has been such an infinite pattern of nature.  In the end, it’s only a curiosity of mine, because I might not know what on earth I’m taking about — philosophical or not.

Source:  http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/story/2012-02-04/lawrence-krauss-universe/52951768/1?csp=34tech&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm
_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-TechTopStories+%28Tech+-+Top+Stories%29

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(What About Artificial Intelligence?) Free ebook: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence – A History of Ideas and Achievements

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Kismet, a robot with rudimentary social skills

Image via Wikipedia

Artificial intelligence most likely may never come up as a topic for a family dinner, acquaintances gathering, and so on, but it’s probably at work behind the scenes most of the time and constantly changing the level of comprehension when the next best formula of improving artificial intelligence comes about.  (By saying the level of comprehension of artificial intelligence, I mean it in a sense of how smart artificial intelligence can be.)  If you don’t think artificial intelligence is involving in your daily activities, you might be wrong.  Why?  Just think how many times you have to interact with certain smart technologies in a day.

One such technology comes to mind easily is a computer.  Another one would be a search engine!  Anyway, our today computing technology such as computer hardware and software are somewhat inherit the past results of dreaming to automate tasks as if the creations of things that aren’t humans yet capable of automating tasks.  In a way, the striving for creating automation is on a path of trying to achieve better artificial intelligence.  We want something else to help, aid, or even automate things for us so we don’t have to do things for ourselves.  Computing technology is great at doing these mundane chores.

As we looking forward for a better future, a near future I suppose, many of us think about how to develop, design, and create technology that will aid humans better in many more advanced tasks.  For an instance, pilots would want smarter technology to help them in navigating the skies.  Furthermore, on the ground, car drivers want to be able to have cars with smarter artificial intelligence so they can avoid traffic accidents, not getting lost, and so much more.  Even furthermore, manufacturers want to acquire smarter machines so they can produce even more products with even greater efficiency.  The list goes on really.  This is why artificial intelligence is complicate, since it’s a topic where everyone wants to know more and achieve more but yet could not define or confine it to a specific field since it’s almost as if striving for artificial intelligence as in duplicating smart human brains.  I don’t think we humans have yet to understand our brains well enough, therefore we may not achieve the ultimate level of comprehension for artificial intelligence unless we can understand ours fully.

Artificial intelligence is indeed a topic which not a lot of people want to really chat about since it’s rather subtle and complex.  Nonetheless, I think there are enough people out there have interests for artificial intelligence.  Luckily for these people!  I had stumbled upon a free ebook bears the title The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - A History of Ideas and Achievements.  I think this free ebook which can be downloaded freely is a great book to read on the matter of artificial intelligence.  I have yet to finish it, but I thought such a great book is great for sharing to whoever wants to read up on anything which deals with the topic of artificial intelligence.  When I finish the book, I hope that I will be able to write a review for it.  Until then folks!

Source:  The Quest for Artificial Intelligence – A History of Ideas and Achievements

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Philosophical Speaking Me, Someone Had Used Math To Start A Big Bang

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In this blog post, I like to be philosophical.  So let me begin with saying that we all know math is a universal language right?  If I’m wrong, then please pardon me.  I believe in my deepest core that math is a universal language, and I sometimes imagine even aliens out there somewhere in different parts of our universe might be speaking in math, whether their math is more advance or otherwise.  We can use math to see how our universe works, and so in a sense we can safely assume math is universally universe within this universe.

Going to the extreme scales, math works as well.  Whether the scale of the universe or the scale of quantum universe, we know math will work when we really apply math to solve problems in the contexts of such impossible scales.  Even if a scale is infinitely large or infinitely small, we know infinite is possible with math!  How?  We can’t really discount that infinitely large or small is the impossible, because it’s all about what comes after the infinite.  Just imagine this, in the days without plane and jets and rockets, when we stared up into the sky, we could only think it as infinitely far.  Then one day we got ourselves beyond those clouds with technology, suddenly the next infinite boundary would be the universe itself.  So, we can see that infinite is not really infinite if we try, and infinite is really infinite by nature is super rare.  We can say this in another way that infinite is the same as finite, because finite becomes infinite and infinite becomes finite.  The universe is one of those perfect infinite/finite cases.

Why on earth am I ranting on infinite and finite?  I’m not a math person at all, and I really mean it!  Therefore, my speaking of infinite and finite must have a reason, right?  Well, I’m not so sure if I call my curiosity of thinking that some higher being has a roadmap for everything that already was set in motion before time as a reason, because it’s rather a conjecture to some people and nonsense to many others.  Let put the argument of common sense aside, and let get crazy.  So, what am I mean by some higher being has a roadmap for everything that already was set in motion before time?  Well, I’m trying to say that perhaps someone or some force very much like the almighty being that people called God had used math to calculate every jittering in every scales of every matter that composed of our universe and possibly other universes too if the theory about many universes in fact is the undeniable truth.  However infinitely small or large the scales of things, it’s possible still for him/her to calculate things before time — as in knowing things before things even happen.  How?  Take a look at software that had been written by programmers in the past decades; from simple to sophisticated software, we can see that things were set in motion before the users actually use the software.  So, I think math can allow calculation of the jittering of energy and matter and of all things within this universe to be drafted before time, and then with a snap of two fingers — he/she commanded all things to begin.  We call that the big bang, I guess!  Everything else happened and happens after will just have to be within the limitation of the calculation of such a being.  This is why we do have the law of nature such as physics.  By saying that, I realize we may have more than one law of physics, because another universe might carry a different law of physics.

Isn’t that a crazy idea?  Well, I’m not a religious zealot!  I can’t say I’m a Christian or Buddhist, because sometimes I feel I need both religions to get my days going.  I’m not a person who hates science and think religions hold all the answers.  In fact, I think religions need science and science needs religions.  OK, to tell the truth, this is the new me, because in the past (i.e., in my very young age) when I was barely able to write a complete English sentence, I was totally into of believing Buddhas and God weren’t real and science was everything.  To tell the truth, the new me believes in anything is possible, and so as long we aren’t sure about something, it’s best to assume there is something and that something is possible.  Of course, the possibility that there isn’t anything is there, and so it’s too possible.  You see?