The Stream of Consciousness Revisited

A couple years back, I wrote about one of the philosophical questions I have about life. Suppose strong AI (I'm fascinated with AI.) were achieved as a computer program living on my computer, and I were to start its life on my terminal. The same questions I brought up about humans earlier would apply to the AI program. If I send the program a ^C and then start the program back up again, is it going to be the same being, the same stream of consciousness?

The thought occurred to me today that it might not matter whether or not it is the same stream of consciousness. As each instant passes, the old being is left behind. It's gone forever. I am a new person with each moment. Even with this thinking, though, I think I've reached another unanswerable question: Why does my existence seem so coherent? This is one of those that makes my brain hurt, like trying to think of how long eternity is...

With each moment that I am aware, I am confident that I will still be aware in the next instant. Time slips by, and I hardly take notice. But if you were to knock me out, clone me, copy my memories over to the clone, then wake both me and my clone up in different rooms, my clone wouldn't even be aware of the fact that he didn't exist previously.

Micro-Blogging

Well, I've gone and done it. I've created a Twitter account. At first, I resisted. Actually, I was kind of put off by the entire idea of Twitter. I've caved, though.

When it first came out, it seemed to me a blatant rip off of the Facebook status. Why in the world would I need Twitter when I have Facebook status? I mean, I don't even use Facebook status! I think I have set my status a total of once ever! My Facebook home page was filled with old high school classmates spouting off things like how much they enjoyed their tea this morning, how rockin' some concert was (miles away from me), or that omg they <3 teh gift someguyidon't know gave them thank you thank you. Trivial and irrelevant, I just didn't care to read this stuff. Many of these friends on Facebook are worth keeping since Facebook is the easiest way to keep track of them, but I just don't care to update myself on the daily details of their lives. As such, I learned to largely ignore the status updates of other people, and I never bothered to post my own. If I didn't care about other people's statuses, why should they care about mine?

And who is going to have the time or motivation to walk over to a computer and log onto a social networking website to type something in before actually doing it? I mean, am I really going to type that I am making coffee and taking a shower every morning?

Over time, technology improved. Text messaging became increasingly popular, which is one method of Twittering. Then the iPhone came out, and people are constantly on the web wherever they are. Even though I don't have a text messaging plan or an iPhone yet, this might change in the near future. This would make it very easy to update my status on the go.

Then Facebook finally implemented functionality for filtering the feed on the home page. I could actually get only the updates from the people I cared about. Now I actually read people's statuses and see that they can be pretty interesting!

Alright, so what does Twitter offer that Facebook doesn't? Well, Facebook is sort of "private" by default. I can only see what my friends are thinking. Twitter, on the other hand, is like a thought hub. It reminds me a little bit of how the Borg might operate, but without the negative Star Trek cannotations. A collective repository of consciousness. The idea intrigues me...

We'll see if the site lives up to my expectations. In any case, I've been assimilated.

Life Nov 2k8 - Apr 2k9

Thien spent this past Christmas with my family and me in Texas. Christmas morning has always been a meaningful time for me, and I have always regarded it as my "family" holiday, so it was great to have everyone that I loved most together in one place.

This spring, work at ICF started to get really interesting. I really like my job. I like how I am involved in so many things, and I see room to grow. In fact, I just got finished interviewing my first candidate! It was exciting!

This weekend, my dad is coming over to help me finish the repairs on my ol' Mustang. Should be fun. We will celebrate his birthday and Thien's mom's birthday, as well, on Saturday night.

Thien and I are making plans for after the summer. I'll defer the specifics until the time is ripe, however...

Time is flying by so fast. I am enjoying life, but I can blink and a month will have gone by without anything meaningful happening. That isn't wrong, I guess. It just means that I don't have much to write!

Same-sex marriage update

It's come to my attention that in California, homosexual couples already enjoy almost the same rights as traditionally married couples through civil unions. Proposition 8 denies them of marriage, but semantics aside, this only denies them of adoption rights. For the reasons I listed previously, I actually think this is reasonable.

My swing left

I started gaining interest in politics last year during the primaries. My parents, at least as far as I could tell, have traditionally been Republicans, and many of the people I am surrounded by are Republicans, so naturally I come from a Republican background.

However, I love to think for myself. I was determined to attack the subject of politics from an objective point of view. At first, I was completely ignorant, not knowing what a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or authoritarian was.

After doing some research into the matter, I considered myself a moderate or perhaps a libertarian. Conservatives are for small government, and liberals are for individuality, right? I didn't agree with conservative stances against gay marriage or abortion. On the other hand, I didn't like the idea of a liberal "nanny state". Probably one of my greatest fears in life is the realization of Big Brother and the thought police.

Eventually, though, I realized that the Republican party is no longer conservative. The Democratic party is no longer liberal. Instead, they are largely neo-conservative and progressive, respectively.

Neo-conservativism no longer values non-interventionism or small government. We didn't go into Iraq because of possible WMDs. A large part of why we went was to force them into a democratic government. The war also speaks loudly for how much the Bush administration values small government; if it were a priority, America wouldn't be this far in debt.

In fact, my first impression of the definition of small and big government was an incorrect one. The terms seem to refer the amount of government spending, the amount of government economic regulation, and the amount of government programs, not necessarily individual liberties. Of course, if you take it to an extreme, you could end up like China, censoring criticism on the Internet. Moderation always seems to be the key. The point is that giving NASA a larger budget doesn't necessarily mean that two-piece bikinis are going to be made illegal because they are deemed "too provocative".

As for Democrats, they are no longer liberal. The definition of liberalism is that individual liberties are the most important political goal. It simply isn't anymore. The big issues are not gay marriage, abortion, net neutrality, marijuana legalization, or freedom of speech. The focus has shifted to economy, healthcare, energy, etc. Thus, the Democratic party is now mostly progressive, not liberal.

In realizing these things, I began to realize other things. We seem to be living in a country where corporations operate on capitalism when they are gaining money and on socialism when they are losing it. A lasseiz-faire ideology is no excuse to sit there and watch the economy crumble, especially if the cause is policy gone bad like the Community Reinvestment Act. The policy already existed, and it should have been removed. Lasseiz-faire doesn't mean that you have to leave all the cruft lying around. Someone should have seen the credit crisis coming and done something about it. If it wasn't the CRA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, and it was Bear Stearns and the Lehman Bros., we simply should not have bailed them out. It just seems to me that our government has been making all the wrong decisions.

Aside from all the economic blunders, one of my biggest problems with the Bush administration is that they are sacrificing our freedoms in the name of security through means such as illegal wiretapping.

Why are the mega-corporations allowed to treat the American consumers in such a predatory manner? Why are the rich getting so much richer and the poor getting so much poorer? Why is America falling in debt, while Iraq is gaining a surplus? Why are America's education and energy systems being allowed to fall so far behind? These are some of the issues that I want fixed, and these are some of the issues that I believe that the right wing are worsening, not improving.

Yes, I used to think I was a libertarian or a moderate because I thought I believed in both individual liberties and small government. Then I figured out that there are some things that I believe government should be involved in.

Corporations do not get less evil. Trickle down does not work. In fact, the opposite has been true this year. Bad fortune has trickled up. The people who have the money aren't letting go of it. So many companies I despise: Microsoft, most airlines, and most telcos. Other sectors I don't follow as closely have a lot of bad apples, too: banks and oil. Somehow, someone has got to put a limit to their abusive practices.

Energy policy is important, and the reason government is important is because government subsidies on oil are stifling the innovation in alternate power sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear. Republicans don't seem to concerned with changing that.

Government right now is messed up. I guess this is where a conservative would say that we just need to make government smaller, because government never does anything right. Well, there are no true conservatives, and voting Republican doesn't make the government smaller.

My only option now is to vote for the person that I believe will run a smarter government. This time, I believe Obama will deliver that. I heard a quote recently that went something like this: "My fear with Obama is that he might not fulfill all of his promises, and my fear with McCain is that he actually would have delivered on some of his promises."

In conclusion, I now consider myself a liberal. I don't completely agree with a lasseiz-faire economy, since it favors the very rich; and most importantly I believe strongly in individual liberties, as I am opposed to imposing the morals of one subculture onto everyone else.

Same-sex marriage

This seems to be quite a controversial subject currently. Abortion is probably a bit bigger of an issue, but I think that argument's also been going on longer, so I'm not as interested in it right now.

It's funny how strongly people can feel about the issue of same-sex marriage, even if they are not themselves homosexual. Especially conservatives. Personally, I think that most conservatives are against same-sex marriage for all the wrong reasons. Most of these conservatives are religious, and they want their belief and moral system to be forced on everyone else. Allow me to summarize the perspective of a typical conservative that is against same-sex marriage:

Marriage is defined in the Bible as the union between a man and a woman. Therefore, two men or two women can't get married. Marriage is a Christian ceremony, so why should non-believing gays be allowed to take part in it?

The huge problem with this perspective is that these conservatives are trying to suppress the rights of a minority just because of semantics. Just because they have a prefabricated guess at the real definition of marriage, they would deny homosexuals the governmental and financial benefits of the union. The fact is that marriage did not originate with Christianity. I agree that homosexuals should not be getting traditional Christian ceremonies in real churches, but that's not what defines marriage. Marriage existed in many secular cultures all over the world, even before Christianity was made prevalent. To the ancient Greeks, same-sex marriages were perfectly acceptable and valid. Who really is the authority on whether the definition includes only male-female relationships? How far back does the root word go? Latin maritare, meaning "to give a husband to", certainly doesn't exclude homosexual relationships. Therefore, I completely disagree with anyone who is against same-sex marriage just because marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman.

Also, there is quite a bit of debate about whether homosexuality is genetic or a learned behavior. It really doesn't matter, though, what the cause is. Homosexuals have never been and never will be able to reproduce without adoption or artificial insemination; and there have always been and always be homosexuals, regardless of official recognition as a married couple. The human population is not declining, even in countries where same-sex marriage is legal and accepted.

If you don't know me, I guess you'd suppose I'm a strong proponent of same-sex marriage at this point. I'll be easy on you and let you know this time that I love to play the devil's advocate. In reality, I am simply uncertain whether gay marriage is right or wrong. To me, the real issue is whether or not children raised with a male father and female mother grow up happier, in better emotional and spiritual condition. It has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with the couple themselves. I've heard people say that children without a mother and father are less happy, more likely to be abused, and/or less likely to find a job after school, but I've also seen studies that say that children raised by homosexual parents turn out just as healthy as children raised by traditional parents.

Allowing gay marriage increases the chance that a child will be adopted by gay parents or created through artificial insemination, depriving them of a chance to be adopted by a heterosexual couple. If statistically, the child would be better of with the heterosexual couple, I would be against gay marriage. However, I see no problem with a homosexual person having the right to visit his or her significant other in a hospital. The fact is that none of the studies are conclusive, so I'm neither for nor against it. There simply needs to be more study done on this subject. Without this, I cannot take an informed stance on same-sex marriage. I guess you can call me utilitarian on this issue.

One strange cookie

And now for something completely different!

Most processed food products are imitations of real, genuine recipes. They are never as good, but the dish usually has some history behind it. The foods are made up of imitations of other existing foods. Chips Ahoy! comes from chocolate chip cookies, which are very cookable. Chicken McNuggets are supposed to taste like chicken. Processed lunchmeat is still meat, I think. Campbell's soup, Sara Lee, all just mass-produced versions of real food.

Oreos, though, are a mystery to me. Where did the Oreo come from? They are tasty, but they are fake, fake, fake. Honestly, cream-flavored sugar holding together two chocolate crackers? Not a real food. Nothing resembles it! I mean, this cookie reeks of engineering. And who came up with the bright idea to dip it into milk? I'm not being sarcastic, here, either. It really was a bright idea.

I have come to the conclusion that Oreos represent a sizable portion of what is wrong with society today. So yummy and irresistable, yet so fake and BAD FOR YOU!

Enough randomness for now...