It seems that given life's myriad experiences they eventually boil down to a small number of moments, those fine and precious pearls forged in the heat and pressure of moments (only that's not quite how pearls are formed and is a bit more closely related to rocks but I've only a few more minutes before it's time to meet with someone and so I've only enough time to jot down thoughts and not write anything really...good). So I suppose in the interest of being slightly more correct (though not necessarily completely correct, since that seems to be a pursuit that never quite works out), I'll just say that these memories of moments have been forged in what's more or less been an emotional roller coaster over this past week and a half (and what a ride that was, is, and probably will be for a while).
...and since I realize I've only a few more seconds before I need to go meet with a friend of mine I'm just going to throw out a few random lines that have no meaning except to me and maybe a small number of others (if even that, it seems I've a memory for strange things).
"I've no reason to say no." <-- I still can't believe this one :P
"Don't look.......didn't I say don't look!?"
"I grew up with you."
And I suppose the one that's been on my mind the longest, since it strikes me as being so symbolic:
"It will be here, in the park down the quarter mile walk, on the tree next to the heart-shaped bench."
I don't think I'll be forgetting that one anytime soon.
I've a friend named Brett, who loves two things in life: philosophy, and computers (or maybe just programming...but that's kind of computer-y, in a non-purist sense). I'd found the two subjects rather interesting too (the former since high school, the latter since I was a wee scrap of a child), and had thought until recent times that I had been keeping up a reasonable pace in philosophy while still staying true to my pursuit of computer science/electrical engineering goodness. It's not much of an even pacing, really, because I have interests in other random things here and there too (sociology and psych and such, though recently I've been completely stagnant in reading material from those two fields).
So this puts me in this peculiar position where I am at once tempted (a bit more than tempted, try required) to go further into my studies (which is pretty tightly intertwined with math so I'm forced to study that too) in the world of digital imaging, sound, and video, and also tempted (a bit more than tempted, try wanting) to go further into my studies (which is pretty intertwined simply by nature of the material) in the worlds of philosophy, sociology, and psychology. Maybe I'll roll them all together and call them cognitive sciences even though they're not, kind of like how I call the guy I live next to at my dorm in Osaka my roommate even though he's not just because it's too complicated to explain how the dorms are set up there (for the curious, along each hallway is a door. Inside this door is a place to put shoes, a shower, a water heater, a sink, and two more doors. Each of those doors leads to a room. I live in one, he lives in the other. We're not really roommates, but we have a kind of grouping together nonetheless. And instead of saying all that I could have just called him my roommate).
I don't think this realization hit me properly until I met this girl in Japan named Megumi (who has a boyfriend, so no astray thoughts there). She speaks English really well, and wants to go study philosophy at Berkeley next year (with professor Searle, oh my oh my oh my). We were eating lunch together once and she showed me some of the material she was reading, when I came to realize that, while given the time to give it more than a passing glance I might actually be able to read it without much of a problem, simply looking over it led to more than a few raised eyebrows (and seeing how my eyebrows seem to be the most expressive part of me, it would seem that that implies something).
I remember when I would sit around on a lazy summer day on a stone bench off the walks of Berkeley in the shady of a tree and read Hume or Kant or Hobbes for an hour or two, then switch gears and pull out some Erikson for another hour or so. Or I could go even further back, when I would sit around my room sometimes poring over some LaVey (I suppose you could call that philosophy...or a bit of theology, depending on how you want to look at it), or pull out some Crowley. While not all of it was particularly interesting reading, they made for all sorts of fascinating chats with people, be it from discussing the essences of right and wrong, or the conscious states that Fichte developed, or the rhetorical style of LaVey (or sometimes just how incredibly nuts he was before he died), on and on and on.
There was a time when I could sit around and talk about wicca and Satanism with Hoffman (what ever happened to him anyways? Girl drama drove him and I apart, mostly my fault, and I've no idea what's become of him since, other than his occasional showings at Starbucks at the town center), or stay up late at night talking to Chester about the philosophy of the mind (and coming to hear such fine quotes as "sleep can be made up, but once a conversation is gone it's gone forever," or his little bit on "a wise woman once said that friendship often ends in love, but love rarely ends in friendship."), or lolling about with Brett after seeing Matrix 2 saying "it wasn't that bad..." (maybe it was, but I suppose that just depends on how much of a kick you get out of Christian stories. I like them).
To conclude in a non-concluding sort of way, it seems that it's well past time for me to start reading again. The difficulty, it seems, weighs in picking what to read. I've done plenty of technical reading in Japanese (seeing how I'm more or less forced to do so whilst in Japan), a good amount of computer-y things (but again, not enough), and bits and pieces of tech-related news articles. I now have no problem discussing systematics and the issues relevant in simple RSA cyptography, but in doing so I've left myself rather unable to discuss anything more in tune with philosophy and sociology and such (which, it seems, is much more interesting to the common person).
And I suppose it makes sense. Who cares why the extra ALU's in some processors don't actually help performance, or why writing code in assembly yields better gains than relying on compilers? This doesn't interest the common person, only the technically inclined. The common person will continue to run their Windows, continue to carry about with using cell phones without having the slightest clue why they work (and tangentially why they're called cellular phones), and go about their lives in peace (or not). It's not difficult to see why it is philosophy and such makes for much more fascinating discussion. I'm sure I'm overismplifying, but all these technological toys simply "work," there's no real mystery behind it, whereas with the world of philosophy there's plenty of unknown and mystery, of thoughts unexplored and domains uncharted. And really now, when there's time for extra thought cycles, how often do people wonder why it is that the inefficiency of Windows patching leads to server clusters which are easily exploitable? These things just don't interest most folk.
Jumping to a random issue entirely, I was watching Aliens with my roommate who isn't my roommate the other day when I heard the line "This pain this nightmare that's all I can offer you" and finally knew that that was where the sample from Wumpscut's "Bleed in Silence" came from (Good stuff, Wumpscut, when you're in a dark mood). It's nice being able to identify the sources of samples in music.
Getting back on track for a moment, I suppose the lesson in this case is that I really should be spending more time reading and less time doing...whatever it is I've been doing. Clearly it hasn't been productive, seeing how I hardly have any recollection of it whatsoever.
It's time to breathe life in each breath, feel life in every moment, and hear life in every sound. Time for a new beginning.
I love getting comments in my journal. Ones that argue counter to me are great, too, since it's nice to see alternative points of view from time to time.
However
pointless comments such as one made a few entries back (something to the tune of "such the woman you are," I can't recall it precisely offhand) that don't really bring anything new to the table with some sort of support just kind of waste my time (and their time, and bandwidth, and so on so forth). They're not particularly thought provoking, nor are they particularly insightful. But then that comment was made by someone who had rather questionable conduct and mental ability to begin with, so it's at least understandable, if not condoned.
Moving along
So someone decided to write a comment to my entry from yesterday. And like I said earlier, I love getting comments in my journal. This one actually had a point, too. It was great (really, in a non-sarcastic way). For convenience sake, I'll just copy and paste what he (she? I can't tell but I'll go with he because it means typing one less letter) said:
"You are wrong. Or rather, what you write is a joke.
When someone says "you're just biased", one means to express that you have a significant stake in the final judgement on whatever subject you are accused of being biased about. This significant stake in the outcome means that you wish for a particular result, and your desire for this result may cause you to ignore certain facts and emphasize others in a subconsciously calculated attempt to think what you want to believe, regardless of what available data suggests.
As you can see, "you're just biased" communicates a lot. You call it "one of the most pointlessly empty statements ever". But it's neither pointless nor empty. It is a statement though; you got that much right. 1 out of 3 isn't bad.
I suspect that you know this and you are just taking the statement literally because it's easier to pick on (and you did that so well, tho it was ridiculously easy to do). That's a good debate strategy; misconstrue what is being said until it becomes something you can refute. That way, you will always find a way to sound smart. I used to do the same thing in middle school.
You sure you still wanna take that bow?"
So I'll take a moment to write a bit of a reply to this, since I just realized (a bit too late) that my current blogging system doesn't come with a particularly public response mechanism for comments, in the way Livejournal allows. That and it's always fun to write more of my nonsense in here (and if you think what I write is nonsense then why are you reading it?).
Yes, what I wrote wasn't meant to be taken all that seriously. Consider the usual verbosity of my writing (see above). Consider that that last entry was one paragraph. Granted that's not a very solid basis, but I'm not writing in this to make solid bases (okay I am, but only sometimes).
Next paragraph: Yes, that's what being biased means from one definition of the word in the dictionary. But consider that the meaning of words is based more upon common usage than the dictionary (whether or not it should be that way is a can of worms I'm not going to open up, but that's how things work). I'll concede that when your average person throws the statement around (and it really is a rather thrown around statement), it's usually because they think you either have no backup or really bad backup for what you say. Now saying someone has a poor argument is fine and well, but surely there's a better way to put it than simply tossing out "you're just biased." It also strikes me that people who are told "you're just biased" oftentimes don't really care what the outcome is (e.g. me last night). I say something, it's my opinion. That's it. Telling me I'm biased doesn't tell me anything new, I threw out an opinion, and all a bias really is is a tendency to go with your opinion (granted, this often includes ignoring data and such, but by no means is ignoring data a requisite).
Next paragraph: I don't think that was really necessary, but okay. In your opinion I've got one out of three and that's not bad. Cool.
Next paragraph: Yes, it was taken literally. Yes, it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. But if you want to that's cool too. Yes, it was easy. And yes, it was a lot of fun. And sure, it wouldn't hold water in an argument; but it wasn't an argument. It was a blurb in a journal of just one of several billion people in the world. Truly, earth shaking. As for implying that I'm misconstruing something, there's a certain ironic humor in that I'd like to dote on for a moment. I'm sure taking something written in jest (and rather flippantly, for that matter), turning it into a serious argument, and then poking at all the holes in it (and yes, there are plenty of holes) was easy. I hope you had as much fun writing your refute of it as I did in writing the original. At least then you could be at least somewhat happy being stuck in the same boat as me. I really like your jab with the middle school comment too. It seems like a really popular way to get people all riled up and insulted. But catch a person in the right reflective moment, and you'll hear them say "Wow you know...I haven't changed much at all since ______" where the blank is usually something like middle school, high school, or college, what have you depending on how old they are. Isn't it great how at one moment it's a pleasant memory and at another it's a jab at the ego?
Last paragraph: Why yes, quite sure. I wrote the entry to entertain myself, and here I am with even more entertainment coming back at me. Twice the return for my efforts! If I could get double back for everything I gave I'd be a pretty happy camper.
In closing: You had a point, and in a regular argument I'm sure it'd be the superior one. The problem is, this wasn't a regular argument. This was me writing a little tidbit in my journal for kicks and giggles, without much thought or detail in it. Apparently, though, something about it must have gotten you pretty irritated to get you to a) write a relatively long reply (unless you just like writing long replies, which is cool, because I like reading long replies...they tend to be more thought involved, except when they involve physical threats and whatnot. Then they're just silly), and b) put in a couple personal jabs in there. I can respect your argument, but fail to recognize the necessity of making personal attacks. So you were right at first; it was a joke. Then you went along and did precisely what you said I did (I love that part, by the way). There's a lot of ironic humor going on here, and I just totally dig the stuff.
Anyways.
Please leave a name I can identify you better by (negishi doesn't help much, nor do I know if negishi@yahoo.com is a real email and don't want to accidentally bother the person if it is, and so on so forth). Granted the anonymity of the net kind of makes it so that I can't really say for sure if it is who you say you are, but at least then I can ask said person if it was them (assuming the name's of someone I know).
I really have no problem with arguments against what I say, I'd just prefer to have them a) without personal attacks, since those seem rather unnecessary, and b) of a good length and detailed, which yours was, and I really (unsarcastically) appreciate. I'd have a much greater respect for hate mail if they were all equally well argued (just unfortunate that this one was slightly off-base....but it's writing on the net, it happens). And of course, if you happen to read this again, do feel free to comment on my counter, particularly if you think I've missed something (I probably did). I think I made a few personal jabs in this entry too (naughty me), but I hope that, given your response, we can call it even and leave the personal attacks out of it.
...has to be one of the most pointlessly empty statements ever.
Clearly, every person has their own particular set of preferences. Some things you like, some things you don't. Simple. What you do and don't like is an integrated part of you that you can't simply abstract away from your particular point of view. Anything you touch anything you say anything you do is wrapped up in bias and opinion and preference. Everything's an opinion, an argument, an effort to push one particular point of view (i.e. yours) over that of others. Some opinions are better argued and have a more solid foundation, others aren't. Nonetheless, they're nothing but opinions, and as such as filled with all sorts of colorful biases. To say that something a person says is "just biased" is a completely empty statement that does nothing more than say "you're just speaking your opinion."
Really now, what was I going to do; speak yours?
I have no real ending to this so I'll close with a little bow.