Sandbox

2007-01-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

This is just my two cents about this school

I understand that the school, when it comes to reputation, is higher than many schools in the world. Realise that this does not mean the best education. Give the teachers more TIME. Now, if you haven't noticed most of what the students would call a good teacher spend extra time in their normal daily work. This includes working on holidays or working until late night. What you need to do is to give them less administrative work and let them focus on teaching. This school is obsessed with itself. At least be honest about it.

Realise that even if the subjects are seperate, they need to be interconnected. In real life, you never (unless you go to education) will use each of those subject seperately. While having seperate department is convenient, I think that the teachers should not be bound by it.

Social Service...I don't know. While I think it's good that a few people get forced to do so. However at times it is more trouble than its worth. But that's the student's problem not yours.

Assessments is another problem that I would like to discuss with you. You cannot simply sum up a person's progress with a number between 1 to 7. Even worse, an effort grade where there are THREE main grades for it. A, B, C. A being excellent, B is good, C is enough effort. I think teachers do realize that people treat C as a bad thing. Maybe we should change it to A*, A, B, C. In this case B is enough effort. C is automatically bad. This is highlighted by the fact that people get called to the office for a C grade. Also this current assesment is a joke, the teachers did not have enough time to properly create an accurate assesment. I understand that the teacher-parent evening needs to be introduced somehow, but can't you do it another way?

I know that this is too late, but what were you thinking when you introduced the multi-uniform policy? You are dividing the school. Blue shirt, white shirts, it shouldn't matter. Geez...

For more IB focused problems is, of course, the courseworks. As I have said the teachers need to talk to each other more. One reason why courseworks really stress us out is that many of them needs to be done at the same time. You know the feeling right? You're so happy you finished STS coursework, but then you have to do World Lit before the sun rises....

Anyway, that is all for now, because I wasn't joking about World Lit before the sun rises. I hope that you do not think that I am dissing the school. I enjoyed my stay here greatly. I just try to give constructive comments so the generations after me can enjoy this school more. This school have the potential to be better, but because of the fact this school have an amazing reputation, this school ignores that potential. I found this really disturbing and dangerous. Remember that this school is about education not business. It does not matter how many people is in the waiting list, but the happiness and education of the students that is in the school.

2006-09-25T05:20:00.000-07:00

Watching "Serial Experiments Lain" opened my philosophical eye for the first time in a while. The story is about the validity and reality of the Wired (an uber internet) and how it affects human in the 'real' world. In the anime it ended up in quite a happy note, with emotions being the anchor to the 'real' world. Here I merely explore the possibility of a philosophy of a human existing as data and information in the web, and how it is actually quite similar to how we are now.

Human.exe

Since the beginning of human existence we strive for knowledge and information. So much so that we did what no animals have ever done before. We drew and wrote, first on stones, to communicate our knowledge to the rest of the world, and also so that when the individual dies his knowledge and information lives on. This is the basis of our civilization and the only reason of our success as a species. We have gone along way from cave paintings and carved writing. Our first breakthrough of the communication of knowledge is the creation of a written language. Our second breakthrough is the creation of books. Our third and most current breakthrough is the invention and mass production of the personal computers (PC) and with it the computer wide area network. The most famous being the Internet.

The Internet is an amazing network consisting of millions of users all around the world existing as data in a new universe. And it is a new universe with its own rules and laws. There are no fundamental particles such as leptons or quarks. No, in the Internet there are only 1s and 0s, that is the Internet's fundamental particles. So, I ask myself, what does that make the characters inside the Internet? Not just the user-based characters, but what gamers would call NPC or Non Player Character. Characters that live purely as data. Not just 'characters', even programs and applications. My friend described human as a process. Even if this is not what he intended to mean, I understand it as 'we are the software' of this universe.

How are we a software? Well what a software essentially do is take in input and process the raw data, and from that effect the environment around us by using hardwares that is available to us (namely our body). Knowledge is power after all. And we are the embodiment of that power. All living things are.

The world is like a giant computer network, where the non-living objects bend knowledge, sort of like how a copper track would act in a circuit, and the living things (simply more complicated non-living things) are those who take in the data from the surroundings process them with a processor (say the mind).

There is one big difference between your everyday system software and living things though. Softwares are not perfect. Not at all. That's why there are useful (or annoying, depends how you look at it) things called updates, where a group of programmers come together and improves the software in question, based on the feedback of the user. This is why they have the pop-up that ask you whether or not you want to send a report on the bug that caused the program to crash every so often. Here we can see that a program is created by a programmer, to solve a desire of the user. In turn the user feedback to the programmer so that the programmer can improve the program.

Living things on the other hand are self updaters. While a computer software need a programmer to actually update it, living things are the user and programmer as well as the program at the same time. Possibly. Or we are the program and the programmer at the same time while god is the user. Nevertheless, the user (if it's not ourself) would be out of our perception.

Humans being programs and the programmer is key to evolution. As the world demand more from us, so we change. We update ourselves. From the most basic bacteria, we have updated so much, that we are now a multi-celled sentient organism.

So if our being is simply a process, it won't be that much difference then if we, for some extraordinary reason, we started living as 1's and 0's in a computer, except we will probably think slower, but will last a longer time.

Our body is the most complicated hardware in the business. This has been proven by our success. Though our body is not exactly the best in anything. We are not the strongest, or the fastest, merely the most flexible, and in this ever changing world, it is a key survival traits.

In that sense, human beings are just computers who are able to upgrade themselves. We are a combination of a hardware and a major software (the OS) while our emotions are more or less application softwares that is attached to the OS. Even the strongest of emotions, such as love, revenge, as well as the sense of duty, are nothing but emotions and thus simple applications controlled by the OS.

There is only one aspect of human nature that does not fit the software look of humans is arts. I'm not very appreciative of the visual arts, paintings and sculpture, however I am no stranger to sitting in my room, spending hours after hours, simply listening to music. Music is amazing. It follows no logical path to pleasure. One could say that it is only random frequency and amplitude of air vibration that vibrates our eardrum. And yet, it creates such a beautiful feeling.

Music is a collection of harmonics and notes that is a certain frequency and a certain amplitude. It is something that is collective through out the human race. Somehow, music seems to vibrate the actual 'tracks' that the universe is built on. It probably started as a background disturbance of programs and develops later on, until it is ingrained into the nature of humans.

2006-07-20T22:40:00.001-07:00

I was the most unfortunate.
I knew that there was no exit out of this maze.

Then, he was the next unfortunate.
He did not know that there was no exit out of this maze.

But all the rest weren't so unfortunate.
They didn't know that they were in the maze in the first place.

-Frederica Bernkastel

2006-07-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

The little girl cried when she lost her marbles in the desert.
She searched the desert for one hundred years.

The little girl cried when she thought she might've lost them in the sea rather than the desert.
She searched the depths of the sea for one hundred years.

The little girl cried when she thought she might've lost them in the mountains than the sea.
How long will it take till she begins to doubt whether or not she actually lost them to begin with?

-Frederica Bernkastel

2006-07-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

Possible Coursework Poem:

I cannot quench your thirst
Because even if you yearn for the truth, you refuse to believe in it.

I cannot quench your thirst
Because no such truth exists that you are in anticipation for.

But I still want to quench your thirst.
Because I am the one the that put you into the desert.

-Frederica Bernkastel

I think this say quite a lot in human nature and truth in general. People have a sense of self protection that always change their own perspective to keep themself from getting hurt to badly. Also, because of the dark base of human nature, people are naturally suspicious of others, because we often think that people only do things for their own gain, and is willing to manipulate people for reward. As a result we cannot trust each other, and thus truth is obscured.

Even if the truth of a person is wrong, in that person believe that is the only truth, then that person will always stick to his truth and never accept any other truth, because they believe so much in that truth. A devout christian will say that the truth is that his/her god exists and that is the only god, where as a hindu will say that that is not true, that there's in fact a myriad of gods. No matter how much evidence one side give to the other to prove them wrong, the two side will always believe that their side is correct (if they truly have faith in their religion).

A non-religious example is parents. Well, some of them anyway. You will notice that some parents, no matter what evidence is given, think that their son/daughter is the perfect, peaceful, model student that would never hurt a fly, even though it may turn out that their children is acting like total assholes.

Because we all believe in different 'truth's, the truth, as far as humans are concerned, is relative. The truth is different to every person. To a person, it is true that the drugs helps him, to another it is true that the drug is killing him.

The last paragraph, is a whole different matter, but I want to discuss that some other time, if ever.

2006-06-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

Human Nature

Because of the complexity of human nature, not many people like to place themselves in a position where they think about the nature of themselves. In fact only two kind of people explore human nature. One is the psychologist (who themselves are psychos) who looks at the more physical and scientific aspect of humans. The second is of course the philosophers, who do not like to be bound by the scientific laws of the universe.

This in itself says something about human nature. So number 1 of human nature is that we are social beings. There are no way someone will survive, or even function properly outside the social barrier. Our ethics and way of living will just break down as we deal with our bare necessities. The human nature and our so called great culture will just dissolve into nothingness. An example of this is the use of isolation as punishment. When you lock someone in a place with no external contact what so ever, they will go crazy after a few days in there (except for a few who has enough will power to go through the isolation just by being stubborn). We always seek attention of others, always hopeful that someone notice us. We put ourselves into certain groups (gamers, musician, uwcsea student) to make ourself feel secure that there are other people who are similar to ourselves. This in itself creates the problem of being united. If everyone is in a different group, then how can all of them be put into one group (which in this case is, well, being human). Number 1 of human nature: We are weak beings who clings to each other for support.

Number 2 of human nature, is Darwin's theory of evolution. To be more specific, survival of the fittest. A difference is that now, instead of just being biologically superior, we need to be socially and economically superior then our fellow brethren. Now, we put in Nietzsche idea of the 'Superman', the most superior person, who, by pure will power, manage to detach everything that will hold him/her back, and step on others to gain power. That kinda sums up Number 2 of human nature. We always want to be better from others. We get jealous of everyone who is better than us. For example I am currently jealous at Dozie and Nat, for getting high SAT scores without much effort, and is jealous of Han who have the will power to lock herself in her room every week and practice SAT's. I was extremely happy when I found out that I have beaten Khoi in a math test. Number 2 of human nature: We are selfish bastards.

That's all I'll put now. I'll probably continue the list later...

2006-03-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

Theory of Knowledge Essay: Responsible Actions

Are people really responsible for their actions? This depends, of course, on the way that people think of themselves and the amount of freedom we have. Why? Well because when we have responsibility to do something and we chose to do it, it is our responsibility. However if you are not free to do something and has no choice what so ever to do it, then you do not have responsibility to do it, because you cannot stop what you are doing, because you are not free. Another aspect to look at for responsible action depends on our intentions, or what made us did that action. To do a responsible action, the person doing it must intend to do the action.

If we follow Sartre's idea of freedom, then we are responsible for all our actions. Sartre is the father of existentialisms and is quite famous for his idea of absolute freedom, where everything we do is our choice and that we are always responsible for our actions.

“We are ‘condemned to be free’; there is no limit to our freedom, except that we cannot cease being free”¹

This is called existentialisms. Existentialisms however does not put into context of causality, because, according to Sartre, there is no such thing as causality. So in this sense all our actions are responsible. Unfortunately Sartre’s idea of freedom, does not work in the real world, because your mind will always be effected by outside influence, such as our emotions for that person, or if we are distracted during the time.

Causality is the main point of Determinism. Determinism is the philosophy, where all events are triggered by other events that are triggered by other events, so on and so forth. In this sense, no matter what people do, they will do what they have been determined by past events to do. To give an example of this, we shall look at the Loeb case.

“In 1924, two teenagers (Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb) were tried for the murder of a 14-year-old in Chicago. They were defended by the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow , who argued against the boys being given the death penalty... Darrow argued that they were so much a product of their upbringing that they could not be held responsible for their actions and that they should be locked up to protect society, but not executed as responsible for their actions:”²

As mentioned by the quote, it is not the criminal that is at fault, because they did it for the reason that is how the society made them. In this sense none of our action is a responsible actions because no one have any say about what they do. Their actions are forced, into them by causality. In short we are cogs in a machine that is our universe. This would mean that there are no grounds to punish someone, because they cannot help doing what they do. I believe otherwise. We are a system, that is caused by causality and cause causality, by choosing. We have freewill. That is what makes us human. We are free in ourselves, because we believe we are free.

Alright, we, humans, are free. What does that have anything about the responsibility of our actions? When someone is free, we have the ability to choose what we do, and thus what our intentions are. Intentions are very important to an action. To hold someone responsible for an action, that person will need to have an intention to do the action. For example, if someone was riding a car peacefully, and someone jumped out from no where and was hit by the car, the driver cannot be held responsible for his or her actions.

If the driver, however, did not call for an ambulance, then he is responsible for that action, or more accurately the lack of action. The driver’s intention, if he or she did leave the victim behind, is to save him or herself. That is a responsible action, because the driver knew that the victim was hurt, but put into consideration of his or her own personal safety first.

That scenario is a simple one, and in real life it is not that simple. A more complex scenario would be in the context of World War II. Did all of the Germans intend to make the victims of the Holocaust suffer by not trying to stop the Nazi? Surely, they ought to know about it. Of course not. Some of them did not know where the Jews and Gypsies went. Others have the intentions to save themselves. Yet people blame them for not trying to stop the Nazi. To intend to do something a person must have knowledge about the action.

In the other hand can you do something and not intend the consequences? If you want to kill someone by blowing up a building, do you intend the death of the other people in the building? By not fighting against the Nazi, does the Germans intended the Holocaust to happen, because it is a consequences? Some of this people would enthusiastically answer, yes, they are responsible. Then when someone gets a job, as a teacher, designer, or engineer, does he or she intended for the person who get rejected to be rejected? It’s often that these thoughts are buried in the mind, and the knowledge is there, but often, to make themselves feel better people ignore these consequences. However, because there is knowledge of the consequences, it is intended.

Can someone be held responsible for their actions when they are drugged, drunk, or brainwashed? Many would argue that if drunk, that person can still be held responsible for his or her actions, because it is that’s person’s intention to get drunk. However, what if someone slipped some alcohol into that person’s drink without that person knowing? What then? Is that person still responsible for his or her actions? The division between responsible and not responsible is often depends on how drunk is that person, and whether or that person intended to drink. In conclusion, to do a responsible action you must be able to create decision when you are aware of the consequences.

Brainwashing is rather trickier than that though. Using the Nazi as an example again, we can see the extend of a successful brainwashing. Most Nazi soldiers are brainwashed to see a Jew as an animal. Did they intend to torture and kill men, women, and children? After all, to them they are not killing men, women, and children. To they are killing filth and animals, at least that is their believe, and indeed, they didn’t intend to kill men, women, and children, and therefore they are not responsible for that action.

People with mental conditions, such as kleptomaniacs, complicate the problem with intentions. When a kleptomaniac steals, does he or she intend to steal, or is it a compulsive action? As the kleptomaniac have the ability to stop the compulsive action, and because the kleptomaniac did not intend to not steal, he or she intended intend to steal via intention through consequences.

While some parts of a responsible action are sound, critical thinking; it is not all that is required to do a responsible action. Keep in mind that doing a responsible action is different from doing a moral action. For someone to do a responsible action, that person will need a knowledge of the consequences of the action, the intention to do that action, and the freedom to do that action.

Reference

1. Leslie Stevenson, David L. Haberman, Ten Theories of Human Nature (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 182

2. Greg Dewar, Oxford Revision Guides AS & A Level Religious Studies: Philosophy & Ethics (Great Britain, Oxford University Press, 2002), 127

2006-02-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

Entropy and the Origin of the Universe

Entropy is, as some of you would know, disorder. With our current physics laws, we have determined that entropy will always increase, because for every TU (time unit, what I call the smallest unit of time) the molecules will move until they become more and more disordered, because the chances of something going back to order is so small it's inconcievable.

For example, is it impossible for all the molecules of a ball to vibrate at the same time and direction, so that the ball would move? Sounds weird, doesn't it? But it is totally posible for it to happen, however the chances of every single molecules of that ball to move at the same time and direction is so small that people treat it like it's impossible.

What does this have anything to do with the origin of the universe? At one point in time that inconcievably small chance happened, and planetary order came to be, with perfect combination of forces for everything to work properly. And then in this planet, the order increased again, and life was created. Let us not dwell on how this happens, but focus on our search for the origin of the universe.

The way we currently search for the origin of the universe is to find patterns that will lead us to it. However, if after the creation of the universe there is a point of disorder for an unknown amount of time, then it is impossible for us to even search for the beginning. The best we can do is to search for the Perfect Time where everything is in order.

We must also remember that the chances of that happening is one in a trillion to the power of a trillion. Probably more, but you get the point. However, it is important to be reminded that if Perfect Time happened, then entropy will reset to zero. I would say then a new universe is born, or that this universe is reborn. Because, really, we can't call an unorganised matter, time, and space a universe can we?

So, maybe, instead of defining the Big Bang as the origin of the universe, but the point when the Perfect Time happened.

2006-02-05T23:53:00.000-08:00

Artist's Dilemma

There are a number of ways we can communicate our ideas with others. One is sound languages, which includes spoken languages and music. The second is writing. The third is through pictures or paintings, or visual languages.

Writing and spoken languages have rules that limit them. Visual languages, though, are less bound by such rules. There are styles, yes. However there are no restrictions or rules. Let compare modern art and a Victorian painting. While one can be a blue field with a red dot in the middle (modern), the other can be a painting of hell, with people suffering, and yet both could be intended to mean the same thing. The interpretation is different for every viewer.

This presents another problem, though. For example, if a girl was drawn naked, people’s mind would immediately assume that the intention of the artist is sexual in nature, while the artist drew the figure there to represent a pure body that is untouched by anything. I call this the Artist’s Dilemma.

So what is to be done? Well… the artist would not be able to do anything, so it is the viewers’ job to dive through the shallow interpretation of an art piece and into the deeper meaning that the artist intended. Don’t just look and go ‘it’s a naked anime girl with chains = anime bondage fetish’ but notice the way that the chains are connected to a heart, a scale, and a book, and make sense from that. Find all the dots and connect them. You might be surprised what you can find.

For the artist that has been ridiculed by people for their drawings, just remember this. Be proud of who you are. You know what you intended to be there. It does not matter what the other thinks. You drew what you drew, and be proud of it, and the meaning behind it.

Jinx

2006-02-02T07:59:00.000-08:00

Reality

What is reality? Are we real? It is a question that have plagued the minds of people. Descartes had a very interesting idea about all of us are dreamt up by an evil genius. Hah, evil genius. More like clueless idiot.

Plato of course has another idea. We are chained to the wall inside a cave and behind us people are creating shadow puppets, so all we can see are shadows, and that the real world is outside the cave. Great...really...where do you think the Matrix idea came from, folks?

Let's go all the way to Locke now. The great Locke. What we experience is what is real. Yay, someone without a pessimistic view.

Me...well, i think it's a daft question. Where are we? In our universe. What are we trying to say is real? our universe. Are we real? you tell me. What do you believe? If you think we are, then we are. If you think we're not, which I'm still not sure how you can say so, then we are not.

What people do is looking our universe from the outside, Plato for one, which is a mistake. It is impossible for us, limited as we are to look at the universe from the outside. We can imagine a very very inaccurate image in our head, but then we are still in our universe, or more accurately, in ourselves. Because of what we are, we will always be stuck in ourselves.

Reality is in ourselves. It is not something physical. Rather, it is more of an idea that we have of what we want our life to be. It is something that every individual experience in life, both of the physical experience (existansialism) and the mental experience (rationalism). That is reality. It is not the question of are we real or not, but what reality is to you.

Jinx

Note: Even though I said such things about Plato, Locke, and Descartes i actually do respect them for having some good thoughts.