My Mind is Blowing

Powerful mental tools

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:43:41 GMT

Won't go into too much detail...

Positive Attributional Style / Positive Psychology / Learned Optimism - "Optimists explain positive events as having happened because of them (internal). They also see them as evidence that more positive things will happen in the future (stable), and in other areas of their lives (global). Conversely, they see negative events as not being their fault (external). They also see them as being flukes (isolated) that have nothing to do with other areas of their lives or future events (local)" An interesting test here: http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande271/onlinetools/LearnedOpt.html

Moral Instincts: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html Everyone acts from moral principles provided by evolution. People just their and others actions by assigning particular actions to a moral sphere. The assignment of actions to moral spheres and the relative importance of different moral spheres varies from person to person and culture to culture.

Memetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics this is the route to understanding culture.

Pervasiveness of natural selection: Biological, cultural, and language evolution. Internal competitive processes. Genetic programming. Evolution is not something special that happens, in my mind it's just a step up from something like heat.

(continued)
Habits - success is a matter of establishing good life habits for study, work, caretaking, etc.

Emotional Understanding - http://www.ruebenstrunk.de/emeocomp/4e.HTM Understanding how cognitive judgements affect the emotions that others are feeling

(continued)

Thinking like an economist
more to come...

I'm answering questions!

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:37:19 GMT

Recent meme

1. Do you think people have any misconceptions about you?
Yes.

2. Do you own shoes that cost more than $100?
Yes.

3. What did your last text message say?
I haven't texted in over a year

4. What show did you last watch?
The office season 1 episode 2

5. Do you wear Hollister?
No

7. Do you get shy around the guy/girl you like?
Yes

8. Do you remember what you were doing a year ago today?
No

11. Do you have family problems?
No

12. Where are most people in your top friends from?
United states

13. Where's 13?

14. Who are there pictures of in the room you're currently in?
My family, various movie characters

15. What are you doing at this exact moment?
Shitting.

16. Do you give special ringtones to certain people?
No, but I do have pictures for them.

17. What's the weather like outside?
Cool

18. Have you ever seen a 3D movie in theaters?
Yes

19. What is your favorite holiday?
Christmas, because I get a long paid break.

20. Have you ever ran away?
No

21. Do you text with T9?
Does not compute

22. Have you memorized your social security number?
Yes

23. Have you ever had a dream about people you love dying?
no

24. Where's 24?

25. What was the last advice you gave someone?
Stop, collaborate and listen.

26. What radio station do you listen to the most?
di.fm electro house channel

28. Why are you doing this instead of something else?
The alternative is processing excel spreadsheets into our localization database.

31. What's the last food you ate that had salt on it?
Sausage and zucchini

32. What are you watching?
photons

33. What did you do last night?
made dinner, played half-life 2, hung out with R for a bit.

34. What's your favorite sport?
Extreme smoking.

35. What piercings do you want to get?
I have plenty already. The septum, tongue, and two in my left ear have closed. The other two in my left ear, the one in my right, and the PA can still be used. (Although I usually just wear one hoop earring it came originally from the PA (no pun intended) ).

36. Have you ever seen your friends cry?
Yes

37. Who was the last person you cried in front of?
My daughter. I get teary whenever something awesome is going to happen in a kids movie.

38. Can you do a push-up?
Sure thing

39. Have you ever had a panic attack?
Nope. Pretty much the only thing that makes me panicky is police.

41. Would you ever consider moving back to your hometown?
Hell to the No.

42. Describe your laugh?
I used to be a horshack type laugh but now it's a hearty chortle.

43. What do you think about the person that last commented you?
I don't know.

44. Who sings the song you last sang?
Lily Allen

45. Plans for this weekend?
Not yet

46. How was last weekend?
Good, we went camping at Pedernales.

47. Have you ever been to California?
Yep. Nice place to visit.

48. What are you listening to right now?
Fan under my desk. Our office building has poor temperature control.

49. What color is your underwear?
Today I think green and white boxers.

50. Do you like anyone right now?
You mean, like a crush? Not so much really.

I guess these are all made up by single teenagers or twenty-somethings. Some of the questions seem really adolescent (#50) and this one in particular could be made more smartass-proof by altering the questions to require explication instead of yes/no answers. However that would require more time to generate and answer so I won't go into it now.

Solstice Party

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:02:17 GMT

Please come to our solstice party December 21st at 7:00pm. RSVP if you will attend. We will burn our traditional yule effigy, sing, drink, and have fun till the cows come home or until your host is exhausted.

Holiday parties

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:04:39 GMT

This Sunday, November 25, around noon we are having a post-thanksgiving potluck until mid-afternoon or later. Please come by and hang out with our family and check out our new porch. Bring leftovers or beverages or just yourselves. It will all be very low-key.

Watch this space for information about our annual solstice party to welcome in the new year. Friday december 21st (the solstice is at 1:06 am central time). Bring in the new year right with the burning of the 2007 effigy. It's always great fun and there is always a great fire :)

Anyways call, email, or comment with RSVPs or questions.

Fish in Prague @ Rock Cafe

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:09:38 GMT

Monday night @ Rock Cafe

Crashed drug plane owned by US Government?

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:54:16 GMT

From BoingBoing via. Fark

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/09/crashed-drug-plane-o.html

Are Homosexual Civil Unions A 600-year-old Tradition?

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:02:15 GMT

A very interesting bit of legal history...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823110231.htm

For example, in late medieval France, the term affrèrement -- roughly translated as brotherment -- was used to refer to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe. These documents provided the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many characteristics with marriage contracts, as legal writers at the time were well aware, according to Tulchin.

...

The effects of entering into an affrèrement were profound. As Tulchin explains: "All of their goods usually became the joint property of both parties, and each commonly became the other's legal heir. They also frequently testified that they entered into the contract because of their affection for one another. As with all contracts, affrèrements had to be sworn before a notary and required witnesses, commonly the friends of the affrèrés."

Tulchin argues that in cases where the affrèrés were single unrelated men, these contracts provide "considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships. . . . I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking. They loved each other, and the community accepted that. What followed did not produce any documents."

Austin Robot Group

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 04:06:41 GMT

Just got back from the meeting. It's the second time I've gone. Got to see the Propellor kits in person. Showed off my new BIoloid. It looks and walks a lot like a pigeon at the moment. I just added a pan/tilt to the head. There are three IR sensors (right, left, forward; or as I like to call them +-X, +Z) and I"m going to try saccading the head around to build up an IR image of the environment over time.

Blue Oyster Cult

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:03:57 GMT

It's got me thinking back to the old college gang and seeing them at the Back Room.

Also, Colette is gone for a week visiting my parents. It's very relaxing ::)

"Oh please, don't let these shakes go on." plus groovy solo equals ROCK GODS

Now "Burning for you" is on. "Time ain't no reason, got no time to slow. Time everlasting, time to play B-sides, time ain't on my side, time I'll never know".

Next up is "Godzilla" since its one of my few clear memories of the concerts.

Also, I've been using "MediaMonkey" to organize my music collection. It's really stepped up my music listening. It has a good built-in search. some very nice organizing tools including auto-tagging and auto-renaming, winamp-compatible media player and a great library. Try it.

3-word answers

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:54:38 GMT

No more, no less.

1. Where is your cell phone?
On my desk.

2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend?:
I am married.

3. Your hair?:
Short and brown.

4. Where is your father?:
Home, web-surfing.

5. Your eating habits?
Big spicy meals.

6. Your favorite thing to do?:
Sinful, evil acts.

7. Your dream last night?:
None I remember.

8. Your favorite drink?
Red Stripe beer.

9.Your dream car?:
Supersonic flying Ferrari.

10. The room you're in?:
My work office.

12. Your fears?:
Human extinction events.

13. Pet Peeves?
Inconsiderate stupid gits.

14. Who did you hang out with last night?:
Wife and child.

15. What you're not good at?:
Meeting new people.

16. Muffins?:
Delicious breakfast treat.

17. One of your wish list items?
Blowjobs every day.

18. Where did you grow up?:
West Texas, Euless

19. The last thing you did?:
Smoked a cigarette.

20. What are you wearing?:
A fancy hat.

21. Your style?:
Colorful and eclectic.

22. Your pet?:
We have three.

23. Your computer?:
Windows dual-core Athlon.

24. Your life?
Investing for retirement.

25. Your mood?:
Ready to leave.

26. Missing?:
Not really, no.

27. What are you thinking about right now?:
This quiz, yo.

28. Your car?:
Three. Which one?

29. Your work?:
Shitty licensed games.

30. Your summer?:
Wet and humid.

31. Your relationship status?:
Married with child.

32. Your favorite color(s):
600nm to 620nm.

33. When is the last time you laughed?
Probably earlier today.

34. Last time you cried?:
I don't remember.

35. School?
Going back sometime.

Three phrases to keep in mind.

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:08:11 GMT

Use these all the time and your life will improve.

"I'm still learning." - This is a great one. It helps eliminate any shame or embarrassment from making mistakes. It's great if you get paralyzed by fear of failure. For extra special goodness tell yourself how you learned from the situation. This insures that the learning actually occurs :)

"It'll come to me" - When I'm trying to remember something (instead of saying "I can't remember"). Usually it does.

"I'll remember to do that next time" - Whenever I forget part or all of a routine (such as making a task list or flossing or whatever). Best if you actually say what it is you are going to remember, such as "I'll remember to floss tonight" (better) or "I'll remember to floss from now on" (best).

French Drainn finished

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:39:04 GMT

Saturday we had a load of french drain gravel delivered, 3 yards. For those of you keeping track thats 81 cubic feet. We spent about six hours saturday moving rocks and today I'm standing tall, able to move again. it was only a few tons of rock but it makes me glad I don''t have to work my body for a living.

Johari/Nohari

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:55:14 GMT

Johari
Nohari

Game sales and distribution protocol?

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:47:11 GMT

OK, so I bough HL2 off of Steam and Galactic Civilizations II (Great game, BTW) off of Stardock Central. Already, having two different interfaces for the same thing is already making me antsy. Maybe I want to manage my XBox live stuff (hypothetically speaking here, I haven't used it) from my PC? I'm sure there are tens to hundreds of online software stores that might have stuff I want. I would rather just master one interface and use it for everything.

So I'm wondering if anybody knows of a system that either aggregates information from these different online distribution services and is there any existing protocol for this?

A possible downside is loss of advertising and revenue and mindshare from the frontend. But in my mind, the front end should be just a utility and the actual sales of the product should be the product. Also there are features such as reviews and rankings which might be in some services but not others. I'm sure you could just embed a web browser and have links for special functionality.

A nonspecific frontend would also let you do things like local search, categorizing, and so forth.

Ditching

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 20:05:31 GMT

Come over tomorrow if you want to help us dig a french drain. Refreshments provided.

(500+10+2) / (800 + 20 + 5) / (0000 + 900 + 60 + 6)

Essential tones of music rooted in human speech

Fri, 25 May 2007 15:21:07 GMT

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/du-eto052407.php

I live in a jungle

Tue, 22 May 2007 15:15:05 GMT

Wildlife living in or seen regularly in my back yard:

Bewick's Wren
Mockingbirds
Cardinals
Doves
Pigeons
Hummingbirds (don't remember species)
Red-bellied Woodpeckers
Screech Owls
Grackles
Cedar Waxwing

Honeybees
Bumblebees
Yellowjackets
Hornets
Paper Wasps
Click beetles, large and small
Lightning bugs
Butterflys and moths (several species)
Housefly
Horsefly
June Bug
Mosquito
Cane Fly
Numerous other grubs and beetles and agricultural pests
Earthworms

Squirrels
Raccoons
Opossums
Meadow Jumping Mouse

Mediterranean Geckos
Texas Spiny Lizard
Green Anole
Corn Snake
Ground Skink
Ringneck Snake
Rough Earth Snake
Texas Rat Snake
Woodhouse's Toad

There is probably more but that's all I can think of right now.

Ditch Digging Party Probe

Wed, 16 May 2007 19:17:58 GMT

Hello everybody.

We have a ditch that needs digging. A french drain, to be specific. And what better way to assemble a work crew than bribing them with beer and sausage? We're thinking this Sunday or Sunday June 3rd earlyish to beat the heat. Who's interested in helping out and scoring some BBQ in the process?

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:21:41 GMT

Song identification meme game:

1: Random play.
2: Post the first lines of the first 20 songs (with words) that play.
3: There is no 3.
4: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
5: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

~~1. Infinite dreams, I can't deny them.~~
2. I don't get blind most of the time I don't drink wine
3. Like the black birds, I'm a do it fluid
4. One two, One two keep it on
5. Why are you doing this to me, am I not living up to what I'm supposed to be?
6. Between mars and jupiter there's a gap for another planet, now we're back yeah baby
7. Rage in the cage, and piss upon the stage, there's only one sure way, to bring the giant down
~~8. Let 'er rip... Here we go... WHEE!!!!~~
9. If you want more beats for your buck there's no luck
10. This is your fate on earth... Check it check it out, check it out, check it check it out
11. My name is crash, sidewinding, I flash like a burning flare.
12. You're a thousand light years running through my brain
13. Just sit back and max and relax off tracks that I kick
14. Just when everything was making sense, you took away all my self-confidence
15. And out of the darkness, the Zombie did call
16. Far be it for me to say you're loose son, far be it for me to say you're no one
17. I'm going to cry, I live and die, I search and find, I waste my time
18. Where is the ritual? And tell me, where, where is the taste?
19. Well, I can hear the trumpets blowing, screaming out the end of time
20. Feeling so frustrated, even antiquated, 'cause you can't update me if i'm overrated

Positive Attributional Style

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:33:08 GMT

Positive Attributional Style

Definition: Optimists have a positive explanatory style, or positive way of explaining events in their lives. Optimists explain positive events as having happened because of them (internal). They also see them as evidence that more positive things will happen in the future (stable), and in other areas of their lives (global). Conversely, they see negative events as not being their fault (external). They also see them as being flukes (isolated) that have nothing to do with other areas of their lives or future events (local). For example, if an optimist gets a promotion, she will likely believe it’s because she’s good at her job (internal), and will receive more benefits and promotion in the future (global and stable). If she’s passed over for the promotion, it’s likely because she was having an off-month (local and unstable) because of extenuating circumstances (external), but will do better in the future.

Attributional Style

Some basic metacognitive skills needed to think optimistically.

Once you start monitoring your self-talk for these sorts of thoughts I think you'll be amazed.

Another important thing

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:46:45 GMT

Just because something is unique or rare doesn't mean it is precious. Importance does not come from uniqueness (I'm pretty sure my tie dies are all unique but not so valuable) or rarity but from utility. Of course, if you already have everything one could want there is utility in collecting rare items as a show of profligacy.

Things I want to write about

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:29:04 GMT

Scapes - perceptual/physical virtual environments for posthumans and the protocols to implement them.

Cybernetics of relationships - personalities are an amalgam of learned responses, such as"If yelled at, get angry", "if angry, yell", "if angry, leave" , as well as positive reactions. Often these responses were adaptive in the early family environment and are still adaptive in similar environments. The interaction between the different personalities considered as rules modifying a "personality state" creates a Complex system and cause it to trace a path in a higher-dimensional interaction space. But basically two different well-adapted personalities can have a basic conflict because the feedback drives the system to an extreme. Of course the system can also be damping or cyclic as well.

Sexual selection - I have a theory on how sexual selection arises from magnifying health selectors. A system with undeniable fitness value such as "Select a mate with healthy-looking feathers" may arise from a simpler function such as "select a mate whose feathers stimulate red cones more strongly". This estimator may functions quite well at detecting more or less healthy mates in a population with homogenous color distribution. But a mutation that gave redder wings would be beneficial not for any survival purpose but because it is tricking the health evaluator of mates. After this you get the crazy feedback of sexual selection as typically explained.

Reciprocity rules

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:54:00 GMT

The most primitive is the Judaic "Treat others as they have treated you." This is "Tit for tat"

A little up the scale is "Do to others what you want have done to you". This is the "Golden Rule" in a typical formulation. The inverse of this "Don't treat others in ways you don't want to be treated". These formulations avoid any consideration of the desires of the other. The positive formulation becomes harmful when the doer wants to be treated in ways that are harmful and the receiver does not. The negative formulation is slightly less harmful. One good aspect of this is that it doesn't require you to know anything about the person you are interacting with.

More morally advanced is "Treat others as they would like to be treated". The opposite of this is "Avoid treating others in ways they don't want to be treated". Both of these are good ideas but the positive is friendlier :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity

Sharing concept nets, cothinking

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:40:59 GMT

This post also addresses mind processes, whether uploaded or synthetic. I believe uploads will initially start off with a brain-based cognitive architecture and then migrate to a more general purpose cognitive architecture in order to remain competitive with AIs.

As an upload, you'll probably want to think with other uploads and AIs. I don't think speeding up our current sequential speech methods is going to be enough bandwidth so I envision the ability to import and export parts of your concept net through a firewall to a shared space, a "concept scape". Inside the concept scape everyone has the ability to see the concepts. The concepts in the "concept scape" will be linked together as they are in the mind exporting them. They will continue to have links back into the concept net of the originator and once they concepts have been identified with corresponding concepts in the other working minds the working concepts will have links back into them as well.

So the participants in the "conversation" are building a shared cognitive structure with a mapping from the shared concepts back into their own concept nets. Unlike human conversation where each mind involved keeps its own model of the shared concept in an upload conversation the shared concept net is actually shared. Instead of immediately being evaluated and integrated into the mind of the listener, the shared concept net allows the participants in the conversation to shift their thoughts into our out of the net.

While this shared cognitive structure is being built it is available for use in thinking by all participants. A participant could run a particular thought using the shared concept net and his own net and compare the quality of results to evaluate whether to integrate the shared concept net into his own mind. He could evaluate the concept net for self-consistency or consistency with his own mind. Or he may just record the net and go back over it later. As he is thinking over the net he is free to integrate any internal supporting evidence from his own mind into the conversation net to improve its completeness or resilience.

Participants are free to link into the shared net and inspect it. A change notification is also provided to allow the attention to follow changes in the shared net.

Firewall and virus scanner processes would be used to insure that no self-threatening concept structures get integrated into the mind of those in the conversation.

A computation economy for mind processes

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:38:01 GMT

I recently read Egan's "Diaspora". It was quite good. One of the factions in that universe are polis citizens, who are mind processes sharing a computational substrate (the polis). Each gets an equal share of computation.

So then my next thought is about how one could get a larger share of the computation. So I postulate a computation market where these different mind processes can buy or sell computation for cash. Essentially a market-based process scheduler.

So the tick is the unit of computation, one cpu-cycle. Each mind would be periodically allocated a certain number of ticks which it could use to schedule itself. Minds could either use their ticks for thinking, sell ticks for good prices if computation was in high demand or while waiting for physical events to transpire (i/o priority boost), or buy ticks to when computation is in low. For example one might buy 1T tick/second for 8 seconds. There would be a stock market for buying and selling future computation rights. The rate of ticks moving into the economy is the same as the drain so there is never any accumulation of ticks but transfer and execution of financial instruments serve the purpose of performing scheduling.