Dreams of you and me. It seems, It seems. That I can't shake those memories

I firmly believe that the only Truth, Fact, Justified Belief, Knowledge that I have is that "I" exist.

We've all had dreams that were indistinguishable in all of their characteristics from our waking reality. How do we know that we are not just dreaming at any given moment? The human batteries in the Matrix didn't not know that they were living in simulated reality. How do we know that at any given moments are brains are not being stimulated by robots or aliens or mad scientists to give us all of our waking experiences?

All of this is very simple...the simplicity of it is that we don't know shit and cannot be justified in believing anything. Leave it at that...live your life to maximize your happiness level...that's all you can do. EVERYTHING else is just made up bullshit. Solipsism.

Anyway, I woke up today from a strange dream that centered around me peeing a lot (yeah, weird I know). The way I see it...the experience of needing to pee in my physical body, located in the waking reality, had an influence on the content of my dream. This could mean three things:

1) My waking reality is the one True reality, and the dreaming realities can be affected by the one True reality

2) The robots, aliens, mad scientists are actually giving me the experience that my dreams within the waking reality (actually a fake simulated experience) are being affected by my waking reality.

3) The waking reality is as real and significant as the dreams we have. Our waking realities are constantly and simultaneously being affected by the other equally significant dream states. Needing to pee effects the content of my dreams. The content of my dreams affect my waking reality (ex: while being awake, the very real life i'm living in one of my dream realities causes me to be hungry or want to hang out with a certain person, or anything else).

I'm curious to know what experiences in my dream realities are affecting the content of the world I create around myself at this given moment.

Ninja Missions: Door Acquisition

I like throwing knives/bo shurikens...a lot. One day I will be able to throw a knife exactly where I aim. Be careful antagonists.

I figured since I'm living in an apartment that I'm paying a ton of money for that I should be able to do whatever I want as long as I leave it the way it was given to me. That is why I decided to throw my knives at a target on my bedroom door. It feels much better to be able to just go into my room any time and throw some knives, rather than having to go outside and figuring out a place to put the target. In the beginning, I was not very accurate with my throwing. Just see the picture below to see my ninja skillz.



I'm planning on going to England for 6 months, and hopefully my friend B will take over my lease. As a result, I have to take care of this door problem a bit earlier than I was planning to otherwise. My original plan when fixing the door was to buy a new door. It seemed like the door was made of cheap materials, so I assumed a new door wouldn't cost too much.

My friend B had also broken his door, so we had the same issue. One day he suggested that we go into the apartment building that had burned down, and take a door from there. The building was being rebuilt and we assumed that they'd have doors for us. A few nights later, I decided to go on my first ninja mission.

I dressed up in my ninja outfit:



I decided to go on the mission alone because ninjas do not work as teams. I run across my neighborhood with a hammer and door bolt. I feel really goofy running around my lit up neighborhood in a ninja outfit, but it was amusing. I get to the fence surrounding the building and realize that it is just a temporary fence and is not sturdy enough climb, so I have think of a way to get in. Of course I'm a ninja and have to resourceful. I figure out a way to detach the fence from the posts and I bend it over and walk over it. Inside the fence is another fence, but this one is sturdy. I climb it easily. This is where I realize why ninjas have their big toes separated from the rest of their toes. It makes it a lot easier to climb things when you can hook your big toe on ledges.

I get inside, but all there is the frame for the building; no walls, pipes, windows, and especially no doors. So I think the mission has been a failure. Although, it was pretty cool being inside an unfinished building. Upset, I climb back over the fence and run home. When I get home, I figure that I have to get a door and decide that the apartment downstairs from mine has to be where I get the door from.

Obviously, I can't just stroll in a grab a door from downstairs. My next step was to figure out whether I could go in the front door or the back door (on the deck). Going in the front door was the worse idea because someone might see me, so I decided to climb down the deck and go through the back door. I live on the 3rd floor and the apartment was on the second floor.

Climbing down would be easy. Getting into the apartment and getting the door to the third floor is another story. I needed to learn how to pick a lock. Went on youtube...learned how to use a uniball pen and a hairpin to pick a lock. Luckily I had a uniball pen and a hairpin laying on my floor...for whatever reason. I practiced on my door for around 10 minutes, couldn't get it, and decided to proceed with the mission anyway. Packed my camelpack with the tools I need and climbed down. I managed to pick the lock in less than one minute. Got in, got the door, dragged it up to the third floor using a martial arts belt. Came back the next day, got another door for my friend B.

All in all, it was a great mission. I learned how to pick a lock and got replacement doors for myself and a friend.

Oh, and writing is really hard for me. It took me way to long to write this post and it's not even eloquent or fun to read. I hope I improve over time.

Battlestar Galactic, Caprica, and the future of robots

Today I've finished watching the Caprica series, and I must say that the Apotheosis episode was completely amazing. I felt as good watching as I did the series finale for Battlestar Galactica.

http://en.battlestarwiki.org

Anyway, the point of the post is for me to help myself keep track of what the frak the battlestar universe was about. Here is the timeline: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_(RDM)

The story goes like this...

1) humans invent robots

2) robots become increasingly more complex

3) robots become self-aware and rebel against humans

4) robots leave human planet, settle on a different planet, and develop technology that gives them human bodies

5) humanoid robots evolve and begin to be able to reproduce through intercourse, rather than by building new humanoid robots

6) eventually, these new humanoid robots (indistinguishable from original humans) forget that their ancestors were robots

7) these humanoid robots begin developing robots of their own

8) once again these robots rebel against their humanoid robot masters

9) however, by some divine intervention, 5 of the humanoid robots get visions of the impending rebellion by their slave robots

10) the 5 humanoid robots manage to escape the total destruction of their planet, which kills everyone, including all the humanoid robots and their own robots

11) the 5 humanoid robots go to the original human planet where their ancestors first rebelled in order to warn the humans of the never-ending cycle

12) however, because of slower than light travel the 5 humanoid robots get to the planet to late, finding that the humans have long left and separated into 12 colony planets

13) these 12 colony planets had already begun developing robots again and the robots have rebelled

14) after lots and lots of drama, humans and humanoid robots eventually travel to a planet where they leave all technology behind and live simple lives with the primitive humans of this planet

15) there are visions of the evolution of primitive humans of this planet and once again the creation of robots...we are back to step 1 (if this is one endless cycle...then the humans in step 1 might have already been a mix of humanoid robot and human, on and on until the very first humans developed the very first robots)

More simply...

1) human make robots

2) robots rebel

3) humans and robots become indistinguishable

4) peace is found by abandoning technology

5) human/robots evolve over time and once again make robots

6) repeat on and on until the end of time...or until humans become smarter

My thoughts on all of this...all self-aware life forms need to be treated with respect...so when we create robots and they become self-aware, we better treat them like another equal race (or maybe even superior to us). In the end, every species has the ultimate goal of reproducing and growing...self-aware robots are no different, expect they are stronger and smarter than humans.

Quantum Physics & Other Coolies

Here are some of my favorite quantum physics experiments/theories

What if we were to experience another dimension? This is what it would kind of be like. I feel like I get a taste of it every time I take some "candy"

The double-slit experiment. It amazing to think that observing something changes the way it behaves. Imagine everything that you do not see in front of you right now behaving in a completely unpredictable way. 

Quantum Entanglement:

Qigong Master:

"What the bleep do we know - quantum edition" <-- check out the full movie

Einstein's Theory of Relativity Explained:

The Animatrix

One of my favorite sword fighting scenes

Sex Chip...

Scientists are developing an electronic "sex chip" that can be implanted into the brain to stimulate pleasure.

Check it out

Snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze!

Did you ever wonder why the snooze button on alarm clocks is set for 9 minutes instead of 10 or some other arbitrary number?

Maybe its a way to help prevent OCD. You know how you gotta wake up on a specific division of time, like on the hour, on the half hour, or 45 minutes. I never set my alarm to some random ass time like 9:43, then again maybe it's just me. Maybe if the snooze was set to 10 minute intervals and you had you alarm set on the hour, you would have to snooze three times so that you don't wake up on a random time like 10 or 20 minutes into the hour, but by then you might already be late. I'm not really serious about this theory.

Another idea is maybe 10 minutes into the snooze you'd fall into a deeper sleep that is harder to wake up from. Very doubtful though, since sleep cycles don't go in 10 minute intervals, but rather 90 minute intervals.

Here's the officially boring answer:

By setting the snooze time to 9 minutes, modern digital alarm clocks only needs to watch the last digit of the time. So, if you hit snooze at 6:45, the alarm goes off again when the last digit hits 4 - at 7:54. They couldn't make the snooze period 10 minutes, or the alarm would go off right away - or the clock would take more circuitry.

Historically speaking, there's another element to the answer. Clock experts say when snooze alarms were invented, the gears in alarm clocks were standardized. The snooze gear was introduced into the existing mix and its teeth had to mesh with the other gears' teeth. The engineers had to choose between a gear that made the snooze period nine-plus minutes or 10-plus minutes. Because of the gear configuration, 10 minutes on the nose was not an option.

According to these clock historians, engineers chose the shorter snooze, figuring "less than 10 minutes" seemed more punctual and marketable than sending people back to dreamland for "more than 10 minutes." The public became accustomed to this, and clock makers have generally stuck with it.

Kaiji

Kaiji is such an awesome anime. It has so much emotion and I love the psychological stuff. Here are some of the my favorite and most intense moments. Of course to enjoy them full you should see the whole series or at least the whole story arc.

Note (12/7/2010): Wow I wrote this a long time ago and forgot to finish it. Anyway here is part of the most intense scene. It's not the whole thing, but I'm do lazy to edit the video myself so I used someone else's youtube upload.