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Looking Up
Sunday. 1.22.12 12:45 am


Between my need to be as awesome as possible and the unfulfilled potential that comes with having a naturally athletic body (ladies!), I've always had an interest in parkour. My idea was to try to get into some sort of club when I started school at Tech, but that didn't work out too well, so I sort of put it aside. But now after reading Zanzibar 's inspiring post I've decided to try to get into it again. So we'll see how that goes.

Rush is over. It was nuts! Met some really cool guys, hopefully I'll be seeing more of them in the future.

Had my first Bible study of the semester with my good buddy. Looking forward to an awesome semester in that regard.

Got my physics book in the mail yesterday, just in time to finish this first homework assignment over the weekend. Except...it's the wrong edition. Looking forward to a good semester though, because HEY I'm trying to do the homework that's progress.

TTYL guys.

EDIT 1/25/2012

I love this song so much.

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Funny
Sunday. 1.15.12 5:44 pm


I feel good these days. Enjoy the tune

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Rush
Tuesday. 1.3.12 4:42 pm
My first rush event ever will be this semester! It will be a new experience. Guess who has a keyboard and designed the t-shirts?

This guy.

I don't feel like really updating this blog. I'm mostly doing it out of a need to be present. So.

Hey, guys, when someone invites you to a facebook event, you're expected to RSVP...whether you're going or not. Even a MAYBE to show that you have knowledge of the invitation. If they wanted you to not respond, they'd send you a letter.

I had a major head rush last night as I was exiting my car. I'd forgotten what it feels like. I was looking at the stars and moon, which were spectacular, and suddenly everything was all buzzing and flashing darkness and stuttering. Since these rushes only occur after I rise from a seated or laying position, I've never had to deal with them while doing strenuous or complicated tasks. The most I've done is unlock and open a door, maybe flicking on the lights as I entered a new room. But even that's fairly impressive considering that during that period I'm mostly blind and seemingly incapable of thought. It's like one thought gets freeze-framed in my head until the moment passes. That thought is usually something along the lines of "Here comes a rush!" so that's a laugh. Still, I can walk, talk, unlock doors, etc. Like auto-pilot.

I wonder if it would be accurate to say that my self-awareness stops during those periods, leaving me as...hmm. Some sort of zombie? Raw intelligence with no "little man" behind the controls? It's an idea I picked up after reading Blindsight by Peter Watts. Certainly an interesting book with interesting ideas about the human experience. Not to be confused with the book by Robin Cook or the documentary about Tibetan hikers. If you're interested in reading the book for free online, you can check here. It's very cool, from a philosophical standpoint, and pretty good writing too, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I sort of like the idea. A momentary zombie. Nothing but instinct, backed by the mass of human intelligence. But only as a temporary state. The idea that there can be people like that is sort of eerie.

As in the book, it all comes back to the Chinese Room. The concept of intelligence separated from self-awareness. Any person can know that they are self-aware. But it's impossible to prove the same awareness in another system, no matter how intelligent it acts. This assertion is obvious in dealing with robots and artificial intelligences, at least for the time being. But eventually we will write programs that can pass the Turing test with flying colors. In fact, I think it's already been done. What would that imply? Are these programs aware? Simply making them very intelligent would not render awareness. So how would a person create awareness, real awareness and not just an illusion? Where does it come from?

Where, indeed?

If the illusion of awareness is complete, then there are no real-world differences; only the system itself can be aware of its own awareness, or...unaware. So does it matter? Society functions because people make the assumption that everybody else has self-awareness. There is no actual proof of this. (To be fair, it's incredibly unlikely that any finite number of given people are the ONLY self-aware humans, so it's a good assumption.) But what happens when our society is shared with artificial intelligences? In the Matrix, for example, the robots revolt under inhumane conditions and form their own country. Such action is expected if the robots were self-aware, and under that assumption they deserved the rights they fought for. But for the foreseeable future, we have no way to make such robots. Do terms like "humane" apply to computers? Is it a matter of how human-like the computer acts? Again, just being able to pass the Turing Test does not necessarily make a block of code aware. Honestly, the idea of talking to someone and not being able to tell if it's a person or a thing really bothers me. Maybe that's just me, though.

Also, be sure to look up the Chinese Room argument and the Turing Test if you're confused.

Crap I got caught up in another long post.

Um. Food for thought: replace "self-awareness" or "awareness" with "soul". Enjoy the controversy. Bye for now!

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For He's an Alpha Sig
Monday. 12.5.11 6:37 pm
I passed through initiation into my fraternity on Saturday night. It was...pretty interesting. And very secretive. Shhh!

I never know what to write in these things. Eventually I just decide to open a new entry and start typing. And then stuff comes out!

Things with Lauren are...quiet. That is to say, I don't talk to her. In the last few weeks, I've really wanted to text her to ask her stuff. What she thought of me. What she thinks of me now. What any of the stuff we did meant to her.

And what she expects me to do with that stupid little zebra keyring thing she gave me. It's part of a set of three, and together they say "Best Friends Forever." There was one animal for her, one for me, and one for her most current biffle4lyfe. I was never quite sure where I was supposed to fit into that triangle because honestly I don't like the other girl very much...in hindsight, the miscommunication is obvious: my zebra just says "friends."

Anyway, I've been told by a mutual friend to drop it. So that's what I'm trying to do. I don't text her with weird inquiries into the nature of our relationship, no matter how gleefully morbid I'm feeling. I don't text her at all. Sometimes I still get pangs of loneliness, and more often, indignation and anger. But it seems to be working. I don't particularly feel like texting her anymore. I don't update all my friends on the newest details as they come up. (Mostly because nothing is coming up.) I guess that's good.

If things continue as they are now, I'll keep stable and probably be right as rain soon. Unfortunately, her relationship with a close friend of mine is likely to push her back into my life in the near future. I don't need that. Even the fact that he misses hangouts to go on dates with her is enough to irk me. Since I am apparently the only one disturbed by their combined presence, he will likely be bringing her to movie nights and the like when we start them back up over the winter break; nobody else will side with me on the matter. If I complain, I'm just bitching.

Seriously, though, what do I do with this zebra thing? What little sentimental value it has is far outweighed by what it represents to me. It's just a bad memory. But over time I have learned that I usually regret throwing things away. Plus that'd be a pretty big dick move. I just feel like her giving it to me was a mistake...should I give it back? It'd be hard to pull off without some implied malice and I'd rather not be so open with my implications (haha). I'll probably end up leaving it in my drawer and forgetting it. That'd probably be best.

I tell you what, I'm glad that facebook gives me the option to unsubscribe from people's updates. I don't get most of her air-headed statuses anymore, and almost none of her tagged photos. The worst thing I have to put up with is talking to the guy, actually, because he usually has a profile picture of the two of them cuddling or something. I try to ignore how many of my own friends like those photos. I can't blame them for it, because they're all friends with him too. It just feels a bit like being left out in the dark and forgotten...

Well gosh this got much more mopey than I'd planned.

Finals week coming up whoooooooooooooooooooo I'm going to disappoint my mother again whoooooooooooooooooooo

:|

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