In order for anything to happen at all, there must be certain rules which govern the way things work. Such is the case for the physical world. If one considers the mind as part of the physical world, then it must be governed by certain rules which dictate how it works. For humans, these rules cause ends, and I shall call these ends "purpose", regardless of the intention (that word is too vague to use). This means to say that if a pile of mud manages to divert water away, its "purpose" is to divert water away, regardless of why it is there in the first place.

A computer program is something that obeys certain rules in order to achieve ends. By definition, I say that programs have purpose. However, ends are not always evident and they may be difficult to detect. One of the ways we try to find out the ends is through analysing the "means". The "means" manipulate the rules of physical world, in order to achieve the ends. In a computer program, the means are the programming language, the physical world is the compiler, and the purpose is whatever it manages to do(e.g. "hello world"). Or, the means of a set of dominoes is the set of dominoes itself, the physical world is the rules it obey (friction, gravity, normal force etc.), the purpose to fall. A falling apple's means is the apple itself, the physical world is the rules it obey (friction, gravity), the purpose is to fall.

So, if the means can make one physical world behave like another, then the same means can achieve the same ends, i.e., they have the same purpose. For example, if I vary the strength of an electromagnet in space, I can make an iron nail achieve the same ends as one on earth. The rules of magnetism are different from the rules of gravity, and the electromagnet is part of the means. This example shows one way which part of the means can make another part of the means behave as though it is in a different physical world. That object would have the same purpose as one in a different physical world.

By the analysis of the means and rules of the physical world the object is in, one can figure out the purpose of that object. Yet, sometimes even in the same physical world, an object with the same purpose may not have the same means. This means that if the means are not directly observable, and only the purpose are, one can only make a guess as to what the means are.

In a different physical world, one can emulate exactly the same purpose by injecting certain means in addition to the means that make that certain mean in the original world serve its purpose. An analogy would be an PS emulator program used to play PS games in computers. The PS would be the original world, the computer would be the new world, the emulator program would the set of means injected to make the original means, the CD, serve the same purpose as that in the original world.

Assuming the above are all true, it seems possible to emulate the human mind exactly using computer programs. Just like the physical world, the microchips contain rules which the hardware and software must follow. Codes can be inserted to make subsequent lines of code serve the same purpose as a ball dropping onto the table. As such, if the mind is part of the physical world, the mind can too be emulated perfectly using software, provided we know the means of the mind, and the rules of the physical world. The mind in the software would hence have the same purpose as the mind it is trying to emulate.

I see that the problem with all AI programs is that they produce the means to serve a known purpose. This implies that there can be many different means to produce the same ends, as long as the purpose is achieved it is a good program. Note that in my previous definition of purpose, the purpose is implicit, only the means are explicit. You can know everything about a pile of mud, but it only has a purpose when something happens to it and it reacts in a certain manner. In computer programming, the purpose is explicit. Thus, when AI attempts to emulate the way a gamer plays games, the programmer is fully aware that the program's purpose is to win the game, and the means are secondary. However, a real gamer doesn't have a fixed an explicit purpose. A real gamer is really what makes him up, not his purpose. It is what makes him up that cause him to try to win, to taunt the person whom he can pwn with his hand tied to front of the moniter, to get frustrated when he cannot win, and to leave the game when he wins so many times that he gets bored.

The speech emulation program that tries to learn how to talk like a real person, the jabberwacky, seems to have a different set of means from a real person. What makes up a real person cause him to get frustrated, it causes to be bored and want to be entertained, it causes him to be frustrated and type in all caps. The emulator doesn't do that because its set of means in inherently different. Anger is a means, not an ends, and the programmer must not program it so that is shows anger, but it must be programmed the same way that humans are programmed to be angry.

One can argue that if they have the same purpose, a different program having different means would be the ame thing. That may be true, but the problem is that the purpose of a human being is implicit, while the means of a human being is explicit. It seems to be more constructive to program a human being by examining the means than to examine the purpose.

From wikipedia, for those who still dunno what certain words mean

gg - Short for "good game." Literally, it is just an expression to show that the players appreciate the game. May also mean "a good match"; or said out of courtesy during the game's end. However, it is often used to signal the end of a game or a point where the game cannot be won by a team. Increasingly, it is used to mean "nice try" or "I got you" by a player who has killed another player and is generally meant to taunt.

ggxx means gg multiplied ten times.

imba - Imbalanced. Used to indicate a hero, item or team that is considered inherently to be too strong.

lagger - A player who lags too much from the other players may be disconnected due to high lag times.

newbie, newb, noob,noobo,nubcake, nub,noobsauce, noobzor - An insult that attacks the player's skill. This insult implies that the player is new to the game. While not overtly insulting, players who are not new take offense because they believe they have more skill than someone playing the map for the first time. Newbie is less offensive than offshoots such as nublet or nubcake, which combines "noob" with "cupcake" for a more degrading effect.

KI lessons have been less than ideal. I hope that time would be delegated to discussion students indviduals before the issues are discussed as a class.

I could still remember a funny thing that happened during one KI class. The class was discussing whether you can know something but not believe it. Alwyn, Zilin and I (ZAI) agreed that it is not possible while the class was discussing, and we thought that the whole class thought so too. Then Wangrui overheard our discussion and tried to convince us otherwise. In the end, the whole class awaited while we were trying to persuade wangrui to take our stand. After we managed to convince her,

KI teacher:"ok, class, so we have resolved the part on knowledge and belief"
ZAI: *nods*
KI teacher:"that you can know something but not believe it"
ZAI: "WHAT??!!"
wangrui: "see i told you that's what the class thinks."

Then ZAI spent the rest of the lesson trying to convince the class that it is not possible. Then we finally agreed, albeit reluctantly, that it depends on what you mean by "believe". ahh well... its not all black and white I guess. Especially since we are using an imperfect language.

Is curiousity a negative attribute?

Would you rather be curious about something and know that you can never find out the answer, or to not have heard about that subject ever before? Curiousity seems like a bottomless pit. The more you find out, the more you want to find out. The sense of satisfaction from finding out something is only temperary, the feeling of not knowing something would just chew at you for as long as you are aware of your ignorance.

Ignorance of ignorance is true bliss. The frog in the well should never have seen the turtle. Now, the frog knows he is ignorant, and can't do anything about it. He'll live in pain for the rest of his life.

My my my... evil turtle.

Oh well, now there's no turning back for me!

Give a man a value, and he can use it once;
Give a man an analytical solution, and he can use it for the rest of his life.

Till now i'm still unable to differentiate between cheryl quah and nicole quah. this has interesting implications. only when i thought a little longer about it on the mrt today as i was going home, i realised that in my mind i've been treating them as though they were one single entity! yes, "the quah sisters" as one single entity. it always feels like i'm seeing double, instead of seeing two different people. which also means that if i told cheryl something, i'll somehow expect nicole to know that as well... unreasonable, yes, but it is only today that i realised that i have been viewing them this way all this while.

i don't know them... but whatever cheryl says i can conceive of nicole saying it, and vice versa. but then again, i wouldn't know who's saying it! HAHA :oP

before i know them well enough, each of the quah sisters seem to exhibit cheryl-nicole duality.

Four very short and random stories.

Story one. There was a girl who went overseas alone to study. On a train she met an old lady who wanted to give her an apple. She declined because she didn't trust the old lady. But the old lady insisted she accept. So she reluctanted accepted, but she left it somewhere and didn't eat it, and went to sleep. Next morning when she woke up the old lady was gone and there was a note on the apple. On it the old lady explained that she had a child who study overseas too, and she was trying to show care and concern for her. The old lady also expressed disappointment that people nowadays are too distrusting of each other. The girl was kinda sad after reading it.

Story two. There was a girl who went overseas alone to study. On a train she met an old lady who wanted to give her an apple. She declined because she didn't trust the old lady. But the old lady insisted she accept. So she reluctanted accepted, but she left it somewhere and didn't eat it, and went to sleep. Next morning when she woke up the old lady was gone. The girl read from the news there was an old lady going round poisoning people in trains with apples and she was glad she didn't eat the apple.

Story three. There was another girl who went overseas alone to study as well. On a train she met another old lady who wanted to give her an apple. She was touched and she ate the apple and the old lady was very happy. This incident touched the girl's heart and she became a very nice person.

Story four. There was yet another girl who went overseas alone to study. On a train she met yet another old lady who wanted to give her an apple. She was touched and she ate the apple and the old lady laughed out loud. Next morning the girl died.

Whatever you do you never really know what may happen.

i remember i ordered coffee at swenson's yesterday. The coffee did not have sugar in it, but it still tasted pretty good. So i added some sugar and it tasted slightly better. The problem came when i had to decide whether to add any more sugar at a certain point in time. If i add more sugar, the already nice-tasting coffee may taste better. yet it might taste worse too. If i don't add enough, i may never know how nice the coffee can possibly taste. yet if i add too much, i may regret adding so much that the remaining coffee doesn't taste as good anymore. even if i reach the optimal amount of sugar, i might not even know it, and the curiousity of finding out whether the coffee can still taste better must just overwhelm the current taste of the coffee.

on a random note my mother noticed that both my pinkies stick out when i type.

This year is probably the most eventful v-day i had ever experienced so far.

i think the cutest thing that happened was when the girls received the HUGE stuffed toy dogs and their faces were all really like ^_^ and during chem lecture the girls sat in a row and hugged the dogs, gaining much envy from the ppl around them.

and i received quite a lot of candy from everyone. but i didn't give anything, so i had a net gain. thanks ppl! sorry for not giving anything... it didn't occur to me that v-day is such a big thing now.

later we went swensons' to have class lunch, only 4 ppl didn't go, so it really felt like a class thing. the big thing that happened was of course zhang jin wei's surprise for a certain mysterious girl. he explained to us that it was really random (use stopwatch to time something, take down the number and divide by 9, find the remainder and go down the class list), and the mysterious girl is larrisa! anyway he gave her a pair of pretty big (yes, pretty and big) earrings (from perlinis silver), and the class took pictures of him kneeling down for larrisa to accept. you could see larrisa's hands trembling and her face was especially ^_^ when she accepted the earrings. seeing girls ^_^ really makes my day. which is why i like to sit with yunlin cos she always ^_^

on a sidenote yunlin is violent. the whole KI class can testify to that. and shaosheng you rock.

random memories:

memory 1:

theoretical physics session. The topic was "advanced calculus". The j2s said that because the one who was supposed to teach would only be free 1 hour later, they would be teaching a bit of differentiation first. so they taught differentiation by deriving the differentials for inverse trigo functions, leaving me quite bombed.

1 hour later the china guy who was supposed to teach came in and started to teach. his first sentence was:

"Integration is not like differentiation where you can just anyhow differentiate and get the answer. Integration is MUCH MUCH more difficult."

=.= "

And he proceeded to teach integration...

memory 2:

It happened during the class outing. after pooling we all walked towards the lift. just opposite the lift there was a spa centre with silvered glass doors. when we all walked out of the pool hall most of the guys went to rearrage their hair at the silvered glass doors. it seems pretty likely that the doors are semi-silvered... for all we knew the staff in the spa centre were laughing their asses off (just like the girls in the class).

my idea of an ideal meeting is one with a few people whom i can talk to about many many subjects, with just the few of us in the rj library.

i almost had it once. the librarian spoilt it for us...

i wish there are more people whom i can talk to for hours on end, just the two of us, and even if we say nothing, we wouldn't feel like we are wasting each other's time.

some people have misunderstood my previous post.

to me, an object is simply what one observes or "knows" about it, nothing more. there is nothing intrinsic or true about what something "really" is. what one likes about an object is based on his knowledge of it; the concept of "that object" to a person is identical to what the person "knows" about it. thus, by learning more about an object, one changes the concept of "that object", since what he "knows" about it has changed. the change may be for better or for worse. if, based on what one "knows" about the object, he is able to seek joy from purely the "knowledge" of that object, or to gain joy from what he associates with the object, then that "knowledge" of that object itself is sufficient to give him joy. By attaining more "knowledge" about the object, one risks losing all the joy that one could have had, in exchange for the chance of learning about something that makes the object even more attractive, thus being able to attain more joy. Learning more about an object one likes is thus a gamble, or an exchange.

to me, there is nothing wrong with liking the image of an object; we can never really know what an object is like. we see the image all the time. what you base your "knowledge" of an object on is purely what you perceive of that object, never what that object is.

the problem comes when one tries to interact with the object. a less accurate image would lead to one being less able to predict the behaviour of the object. only by being able to predict the behaviour of the object can one can more successfully make it behave in a way that one would want it to behave. interacting with an object while having an inaccurate image would therefore mean that the object is unlikely to behave in a way one wants it to behave.

therefore, if one is able to attain joy simply with the current knowledge of the object, it may not be worth it to learn more about the object. however, if one can only attain joy from certain behaviour from that object, then it is important for one to attempt to acquire as much knowledge about the object as possible, and hence be able to more successfully invoke the desired behaviour from the object.

i suppose people are assuming that one can attain much more joy from interaction with the object than purely the "knowledge" of it. yet, this may not always be true. learning more isn't always a good thing.

if you like someone/thing, should you go a step further and find out more about it?

after all, you have a chance of finding out something about it that make you like it even more... and the joys of getting closer to attaining it would be so much greater. the hope of being able to attain it would be a pushing force, guiding you towards your goal. yet as the appreciation of it increases, so does the despair that comes when you lose it.

yet what you liked about it is based on what you know about it. perhaps knowing certain things about it would make you like it less. knowing such would take away the possibilities of attaining such joy, hope, and sense of direction. then you end up with one less thing that can give you just that bit of joy, based on just that bit you know.

so perhaps we might want things to remain this way. know just enough about something to make you like it. no more. yet sometimes information force itself on us. something isn't as good as it seemed... it probably isn't worth attaining... the joy that one gets from seemingly getting closer, the hope of eventually being able to attain it will all drain away.

so we may refuse to believe information that are critical of the things we like. at least... there is hope... at least... you spend a longer time in bliss... you don't lose anything from refusing to believe what you don't want to believe...

perhaps, an infatuation should just remain as an infatuation. just a fantasy. just something you like, no more, and no less.

Sunday we had class outing!

The nicer parts, to me, are pooling and the time at the beach. I got a few ultra tyco shots (4 balls in a row... for a person who only went pooling 3 times). And shaosheng had the ultimate shot: there were two balls of his own colour right in front of the hole at the corner, and his cueball was right behind the two balls. He took a shot, and the cue ball jumped over the two balls and went into the hole...

At the beach we played frisbee and card games, then rode the tandem with yan an. Talked quite a bit with him on the way. When we came back, we played murderer. The longest game we had was when sarge was the murderer and nobody could tell whether he was winking or not.

After that we went to the beach, as libing was quite... erm... persuasive... in telling us how nice the beach was. At first we just went to the breakwater. Then i went down to play with sand. Later libing built a sand heart with 6D written on it. I copied her and built a bigger, but not-so-nice heart. We built it close to the water so it was quite a challenge to prevent them from getting destroyed by the waves. Then we wrote our chinese names on the sand. Yishan's name isn't as easy to write as i thought. Kin wai refused to tell me his chinese name.

The sun set. We went to have dinner, but the place was kinda crowded, so we couldn't sit together at first. we only got a big seat with a shelter later. yan an treated us to chicken wing. some people had curfew, so they had to rush back home. played with sparklers by putting all the powder into a yakult bottle and adding zippo, then lighting the mixture up with a sparkler fuse. frankly speaking, the effect was kinda disappointing. The yakult bottle totally vanished after the 'fireworks'. then we went home. ='(

time passes fast when you are having fun.

What are the implications of assuming the Leibniz's theory of self (which I would call LTS)?

Note:
he refers to the person at any point in time, a conventional use of the word he.
"he" refers to the person at that particular point in time mentioned in the context. The point in time may not be explicitly stated, because doing so would break the flow of the discourse.

In my opinion, any theories of self are basically unfalsifiable, as long as they are logically watertight. This is because

1. People only know their own self.
2. People can only come up with a theory of something if they are very certain of a few examples and counter-examples
3. One can never be sure if something else is conscious or not, because only the conscious self would know if it is conscious, so you cannot make comparisons between conscious and unconscious beings, since you cannot be sure if anything is conscious or not.
4. One can never experience unconsciousness, thus one can never compare the state of consciousness and unconsciousness and attempt to tell the difference between the two.

Thus, in choosing which theory of self to adopt, one can only consider the implications, because the "correctness" of each theory doesn't come into the picture at all. In my opinion, the Leibniz's theory of self seems to offer the most pragmatic "solutions" to certain issues that one would need to confront at some point in his life. In the following paragraphs I shall briefly talk about my interpretation of the Leibniz's theory of self, and after that state certain implications of assuming such a theory.

The Leibniz's theory of self states that the self is a summation of every stage in the person's life a time progresses. A more logical way to put it would be that the self is a "definite integral of each stage of a person's life with relation to time, starting from the attainment of consciousness to the present".(Well, after all Leibniz invented calculus, so maybe that's what he was thinking of) This implies that the self is a different self after every infinitesimally small division of time (...okay alwyn, Planck's time) passed. Every change in the point in time, "I" vanished, and a new "me" comes into existence.

It seems that it would be easy for a person who assumes such an identity of self to "live for the moment", because indeed "he" only exists for that very moment, thus he ought to cherish every single moment in life. Yet, the way he chreishes it would not be a life with his future carefully plotted out and painstakingly realised, because he is aware that the life "he" is looking forward to may not be the life "he" would enjoy in the future. If he does plan for the future and sacrifice joy for it, "he" is sacrificing himself for another person in the future whom "he" believes is actually himself. This, to a person assuming the LTS, would not be rational, because putting off what "he" enjoys now would in no way benefit "himself".

However, this does not imply that the person would be rash and superficial. If the person was conditioned to seek joy from what he believes would happen, takes pride in working for a future goal, and fears the consequences of living an unplanned life, he would instinctively seek to work for the future. In this case, "he" is not working for the future, but working for the moment, because his belief in a successful future motivates him, and gives him joy at that very moment to work for it. If he does anything else, he would suffer guilt from the belief that not working for the future would lead to a worse future. Hence, his choice of working for the future is really one of the means of attaining joy. It would not be paradoxical for a person who assumes the LTS to plan for the future and work towards it.

The difference between a person who assumes the LTS and another eprson is that the former would not be willing to suffer too much to reach a future goal. If the sufference exceeds the difference between the pride of working and the guilt and fear from not working, he would not work towards his goal. It is simply not rational to trade off "his" own happiness for "someone else".

Another implication of assuming the LTS would be that the person cannot logically regret. This is because by seperating the identity of "himself" in the present and "himself" in the past, he realises that it is not possible for "himself" to have made any other choice in the past, simply because they are different people altogether, and given the same circumstances, different people would react differently. Hence, it would be illogical to blame "oneself" for the mistakes "one" had made in the past, because "he" in the present is helpless regarding his present circumstances, despite being aware of the correct choice. However, emotions precede reason. The natural guilt and frustration that sinks in due to a mistake in the past are all instinctive in nature. Such feelings of guilt would still prevail at times, thus it would not too surprising for a person who assumes the LTS to occasionally blame himself. The difference between a person who assumes the LTS and another person would be that the former can always "forgive himself" by rationalising, while the latter might not.

Following from the previous argument, if the person assumes the LTS for his own identity, he would also assume such for others (if he is not a solipcist, that is). If such is the case, it may not seem logical to bear grudges too. However, if a decision has to be made regarding the person whom the grudge is borne against, then that person must have changed in such a way that he would no longer make the decision in such a way that would had led to the bearing of the grudge in the first place. For example, if B had been tardy and uncooperative in returning a loan to A before, and now B wants to take a loan from A again, it would not be logical for A to lend money to B if B has not changed enough to make him more cooperative in returning a loan. Yet if B has changed enough for him to return a loan promptly next time, it would be alright for A to lend money to B. The problem with all this is that it would be near impossible for A to tell if B has changed "enough". In fact, A risks losing money if he lends money to B, and yet he doesn't gain much from lending money to B. Thus, in this case, it would be logical for A not to lend money to B again. It may seem like bearing a grudge, but it is really a logically sound decision that protects the interests of A. That said, not all grudges are logical. It was implicitly mentioned within this paragraph that if the person whom the grudge is borne against has changed enough to cause him to make a decision that would not lead to the bearing of the grudge in the first place, then the grudge bearer can allow the grudge to not affect his decision. For example, if A dislikes B because B is racist, and 10 years later, after serving in NS, and meeting many people from different races made him not racist anymore. A is in a position to decide whether to hire B or not. Since B had changed in such a way that B would not do the things that made A dislike B in the first place, A should not allow his perception of B being a racist to affect his decision on whether to employ B or not.

Perhaps the most important implication of assuming the LTS is that the person would not easily make promises. If someone says "I would love you forever.", according to the LTS, indeed, "he" would love her forever, but "he" in the future, with more knowledge of her and more experiences with other people, would have changed in such a way that the promise made by "him" in the past does not apply to "him" in the present. (Note, I could have instead inserted an "anymore" at the end of the previous sentence, but i didn't, and for a very good reason) Making a promise for the future would be like making a promise for someone else, and expecting that someone else to keep it. If he can empathise for a person having to keep a promise he wouldn't want to make, he would not make promises at all, if possible.

In my opinion, assuming the LTS would allow a person to free himself from many of the thoughts that may burden him, and at the same time, make logical and rational decisions regarding his own well being. With the added awareness of the irresponsibility in making promises, one would attempt to avoid making any promises at all. (if he ever faces the choice of getting married he would be forced to make a promise, and assuming the LTS would make him consider even more carefully about his decision) It seems to me that such a life is worth living for.

Today during alchemy lesson i witnessed a mad chinaman prove le chatelier's principle using arrhenius' equation and maxwell-boltzmann distribution. that is quite GGfication.

i hope i can reach his standard in j2.