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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
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<head>
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<title>$if(title-prefix)$$title-prefix$ - $endif$$if(pagetitle)$$pagetitle$$endif$</title>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
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<meta name="generator" content="pandoc+l33tsk!llz" />
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$for(css)$
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="$css$" type="text/css" />
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<link rel="alternate" href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml"
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title="lies and wonderland" />
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$endfor$
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$for(header-includes)$
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$header-includes$
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$endfor$
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</head>
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<body>
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<div class="crumb">
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$breadcrumb$
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<a class="crumb" href="$filename$"><$title$></a>
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</div>
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<div class="main">
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$for(include-before)$
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$include-before$
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$endfor$
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$if(toc)$
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$toc$
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$endif$
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$body$
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$for(include-after)$
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$include-after$
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$endfor$
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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% about muflax
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Contact
|
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=======
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||||
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To send me comments, angry rants, marriage proposals or anything else, mail me
|
||||
at *mail at muflax dot com* or message me in Jabber at *muflax at tuxed dot
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||||
org*.
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||||
You can also use my [GPG] key (md5 hash a4992cbb4a5d48dd4188f7e49cfc3a3d), if
|
||||
you want.
|
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|
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All content is under a [Creative Commons] Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike
|
||||
3.0 license. You can do with it whatever the fuck you want, as long as you don't
|
||||
sell it or make it unfree.
|
||||
|
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[Creative Commons]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/de
|
||||
[GPG]: muflax.asc
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% Changelog
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All major changes on the site
|
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=============================
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- 2010/04/26: Reworked the whole site, turning it into a proper site instead
|
||||
of a rambling blog.
|
||||
|
||||
Most old content is only reorganized, but otherwise mostly the same, besides a
|
||||
few corrections. However, some stuff needs to be rewritten or updated. I
|
||||
already made some major modifications to [Letting Go of Music], adding an
|
||||
*Argument from Spirituality*, a *Safer Use* section and changed my position
|
||||
somewhat.
|
||||
|
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My [Rants] have now become an official part of the site (the internet wouldn't
|
||||
work without unnecessarily strong opinions and emotions).
|
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|
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I rewrote and greatly extended my thoughts on Dennett's [Consciousness
|
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Explained].
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|
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I also decided to put some parts of my spoiler file online, once they have
|
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proven to be useful. First are experiments with [Speed Reading], some general
|
||||
hacks for [Good Sleep],.
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||||
|
||||
On-site comments are gone, but I'm still very much open to anything over mail.
|
||||
Sorry for the broken links. At least the RSS feed is still there. ;)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[Consciousness Explained]: /reflections/con_exp.html
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[Determinism]: /reflections/determinism.html
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[Poetry]: /poetry/
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[Rants]: /rants/
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[Good Sleep]: /experiments/good_sleep.html
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[Speed Reading]: /experiments/speedreading.html
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[Letting Go of Music]: /reflections/letting_go_of_music.html
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% Experiments
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Experiments
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===========
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This is basically my public spoiler file for life. Why should I keep all the
|
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cool stuff I found out to myself? Information ought to be free, after all.
|
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|
||||
- how to develop [Speed Reading] and read a book in an hour
|
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- [Sleep] hacks
|
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- some hacks for [Good Sleep]
|
||||
- my experience and criticism of [Polyphasic Sleep]
|
||||
|
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[Speed Reading]: /experiments/speedreading.html
|
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[Sleep]: /experiments/sleep
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[Good Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/good_sleep.html
|
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[Polyphasic Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/polyphasic_sleep.html
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title: Experiments
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% Ways to Improve Your Sleep
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|
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Some stuff that I found that actually works.
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f.lux
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=====
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|
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[f.lux] controls the level of blue your monitor shows and tones it down during
|
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the night to allow you to get tired naturally (and not stay up all night,
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playing ケロロＲＰＧ like _some_ people). There's quite a bit of research to back
|
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it up and I'm actually quite excited. Hey, maybe I won't screw up my schedule so
|
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much anymore!
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(While [f.lux] has a Linux version, it's just an ugly binary. Use [Redshift]
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instead. All good distros have it in their repository (i.e., Gentoo).)
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Easy Exercise
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=============
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> When you stress a leg muscle a lot, presumably one or more chemicals are
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> released that both (a) cause the muscle to grow (the well-known effect of
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> exercise) and (b) cause you to sleep more deeply at night (the effect that
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> interests me). In contrast to [normal exercise], there’s no need for the
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> concept of fitness here because you don’t slowly go up and down in a measure
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> of effectiveness (i.e., become more or less fit). Rather each day you are high
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> or low on this measure, and the next day you start fresh. In contrast to
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> [normal exercise], where the benefits accrue slowly (over weeks and months),
|
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> the benefits are obvious the next morning (you feel better-rested) and the
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> next day (you’re less tired). (...) The benefits are so large relative to the
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> cost that there’s no motivation problem. Deciding to do it is about as hard as
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> deciding to pick up a $10 bill. Deciding to do conventional exercise is a lot
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> harder.
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>
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> Seth Roberts, [Why Did I Sleep So Well?]
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Basically, putting a ltitle bit of stress on muscles causes good sleep. The
|
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easiest form of doing this is by standing on one leg, while pulling the other
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one behind you, until it starts to feel painful. This takes about a few minutes,
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10 at most, and takes so little motivation you can easily do it every day. Yes,
|
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it works. It's very awesome. Conventional exercise works, too, but why bother?
|
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Why run half an hour or more, when you can just stand a bit while cooking or
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watching TV?
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|
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Waking up gently
|
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================
|
||||
|
||||
I found that alarms that woke me up instantly always screwed with my mental
|
||||
alertness in the morning, leading to brain fog and turning off the alarm as an
|
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angry reflex. Using something that slowly fades into awareness, like slow music,
|
||||
works way better. I also got good results by using TV shows. Waking up to
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something engaging and interesting is always good.
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|
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Caffeine
|
||||
========
|
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|
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No, not in the morning. (Although that helps, too, especially with brain fog.)
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I'm talking about drinking caffeine before going to bed.
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This hack applies only to some brains, mostly people with bipolar or ADD
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personalities. The best sign is whether uppers like caffeine, cocaine or
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Ritanol, especially in small dosages, make you hyper or calm. I actually get
|
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sleepy from drinking caffeine. It takes me about 2 to 3 hours, minimum, to
|
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become more active after a cup of coffee.
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|
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The critical part is getting just the right dosage. Caffeine still affects and
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disrupts your tiredness, so drinking to much will prevent you from getting good
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sleep. The tricky thing is that the negative effects will only kick in very
|
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late, hours later, while you are working like crazy. I have gone multiple times
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for about 3 or 4 days drinking huge amounts of coffee, like at 10 to 20 cups a
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day, feeling great, sleeping great, until I finally found I suddenly couldn't
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sleep all the way through because my legs were twitching so much they started to
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be really sore and my heartbeat sounded very unhealthy.
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Nonetheless, getting enough caffeine, especially in the evening, each day
|
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greatly improves my sleep, my breathing and my ability to wake up.
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[Why Did I Sleep So Well?]:
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http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2008/09/03/science-in-action-why-did-i-sleep-so-well-part-10-2/
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[f.lux]: http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/
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[Redshift]: http://jonls.dk/redshift/
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title: Sleep
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% Polyphasic Sleep
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Definition
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==========
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Polyphasic sleep means sleeping in multiple chunks per day instead of one big
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one. Monophasic sleep is the normal one, averaging in at about 7-9 hours per
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day. The most common form of polyphasic sleep is something like 5+2, i.e. 5
|
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hours at night and a 2 hour nap around noon.
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However, the really interesting ones are those where you only sleep about 2-5
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hours in total per day. Yes, that's not a typo: *2 hours per day*. They can
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generally be classified into Uberman sleep, which has 6 naps of 20 minutes each,
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and Everyman sleep, which has one core of 1-3 hours and up to 5 nap of 20
|
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minutes. Both terms were coined by [puredoxyk], who also has one of the best
|
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sites on how to adapt to them. I'm not gonna repeat all that here, nor address
|
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any of the common myths and criticisms (Like, "That's impossible!". It isn't.),
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but instead give my own criticism why I believe it's a *Bad Thing*. Also, a bit
|
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of personal experience with it because every site about polyphasic sleep needs
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to have anecdotes how bad the zombie phase was.
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|
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Why It's Bullshit
|
||||
=================
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|
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Let's start at the opposite end - what does work? Well, polyphasic sleep is the
|
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best (known) option you have when you can't have more than 2-4 hours per day of
|
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sleep. If you must sleep that little, for example because you are into solo
|
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sailing or your newborn child and 2 jobs keep you up all day, than polyphasic
|
||||
sleep is right for you. It minimizes the damage this kind of life will do, but
|
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you will still be worse off. You will still be sleep deprived. [^deprived]
|
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|
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[^deprived]: Well, as far as I can tell, you are not doing any permanent damage,
|
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so a week of good sleep will probably fix everything again. Also, many
|
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polyphasic sleepers will argue that they are not sleep deprived and I certainly
|
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accept that they don't _feel_ that way. But try using your memory and see how fast
|
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you crash.
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|
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Ok, having acknowledged that, let's start with the criticism. In fact, it's a
|
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very simple criticism because it only involves one point.
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Polyphasic sleep destroys your memory.
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--------------------------------------
|
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|
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Sure, you are awake more (if you are lucky; most people aren't and delude
|
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themselves to the fact), but you can't use the time in any meaningful way. You
|
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can't learn more; in fact, you'll learn less. All existing studies show that
|
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performance is slightly below normal levels, which means you have 4-6 more hours
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of waketime, but you are actually performing worse than if you had slept them
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all. Great job. That's like taking a shortcut, only to drive slower so that you
|
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arrive even later.
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|
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Why is there not a single polyphasic scientist? No, Tesla was not polyphasic, he
|
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crashed regularly. Edison lied about his schedule and, while being mostly
|
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polyphasic, didn't save any time (and he was not a scientist). Buckminster
|
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Fuller only slept polyphasically when touring, for the reason I mentioned above.
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|
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Why is there not a single polyphasic polyglot? You'd think that someone who is
|
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learning multiple languages at the same time would be glad over every single
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hour per day they can get. Yet, not a single one of them is documented to be
|
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polyphasic. Some have tried (mostly early polyglots), no one was happy with it.
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|
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Why does no military or space agency advocate polyphasic sleep? There are
|
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several studies researching it, but they all document a severe loss of
|
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performance and they all advise against it, except when external circumstances
|
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force you to be polyphasic, as mentioned earlier.
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|
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Why does all data collected via SRS, like for example Supermemo, show that
|
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sleeping in big chunks correlates with good performance? If there are working
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examples of polyphasic sleepers, no one of them has ever demonstrated this via
|
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their SRS statistics, and Supermemo captures a lot of those. There isn't a
|
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single example of someone sleeping 4 hours or less per day and still getting a
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normal retention rate for the same amount of data learned.
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|
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There is a simple answer to these questions: Because polyphasic sleep doesn't
|
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work. It's bullshit. For all the claims of "superhuman" feats, there hasn't been
|
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a single bit of evidence for it. Proponents have made all kinds of claims and
|
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assurances, yet have presented nothing. Most of them don't even seem to be
|
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capable of grasping the importance of empirical evidence. It is pseudoscience.
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Alternatives
|
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============
|
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|
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Alright, so polyphasic sleep sucks. But is there an alternative? As you can see
|
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in my blog posts below, I occasionally got really cool runs of 3-5 days where I
|
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worked like a madman for 20 hours a day, no problem. Sure, I crashed afterwards,
|
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but I still got all this stuff done. And if you sleep long enough afterwards,
|
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then your memory will catch up a lot.
|
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|
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If you don't care about your mental health and you don't care about being able
|
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to sustain your behaviour, go right ahead. If you also keep in mind that the
|
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majority of people drop out of polyphasic sleep after a month or less, I would
|
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recommend a better alternative: Amphetamines. It has exactly the same amount of
|
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advantages (awake at all costs), is easier to use and fucks you up just the
|
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same.
|
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|
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Or, a bit more seriously, if you are bipolar like me, you can simply embrace
|
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your manic side and fuel it every time it shows up. Every once in a while, I
|
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go on a megalomaniac caffeine spree, drinking over 3 liters of coffee (or cola,
|
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sometimes - I still like the added sugar high) per day. Sure, I can't maintain
|
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that and after about a week, I look like I just escaped Arkham Asylum, but _man_
|
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do I get stuff _done_ in this week.
|
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|
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Being a Zombie
|
||||
==============
|
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|
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This is one of my old blog posts, written 8 months after my first adaptation in
|
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2008.
|
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|
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> I'm pissed. So very pissed.
|
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>
|
||||
> Polyphasic sleep is getting on my nerves. Let me summarize the last 8
|
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> (8?!) months.
|
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>
|
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> _October_. Yay, finally some Uberman! Oh god, this is hard! I may have only
|
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> 2 hours of sleep, but I also only have 2 hours of
|
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> not-feeling-like-a-zombie. Screw this shit.
|
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>
|
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> _November_. Experimentation. More experimentation. Even more
|
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> experimentation. It works! I feel ok! An unexpected event occurs. I'm
|
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> screwed.
|
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>
|
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> _December_. It's futile. Uberman is just not practical. Let's do everyman! 3
|
||||
> hour core, sleep galore! It works! The excitement wears off, I'm screwed.
|
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>
|
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> _January_. Can't think, can't dream, can't move. Bang my head against the
|
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> wall. Some days are perfect, others are hell. Experimentation.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> _February_. Better times, stricter schedule, more experience. Results:
|
||||
> underwhelming. I crash, can't get back up. This doesn't work.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> _March_. Not enough time. The naps too infrequent, the core too short, the
|
||||
> sleep-throughs too frequent. This is just an adaptation problem, it will
|
||||
> go away.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> _April_. It didn't. It's futile. What about a 90 minute core and 5 naps? It
|
||||
> works! Excitement! Uberman-with-a-core works! I study like mad, finish 2/3
|
||||
> of the whole semester in 3 days.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> _May_. Instability. It really is Uberman-with-a-core. Didn't eat right?
|
||||
> Oversleep. Did some exercise? Oversleep. Didn't find a bug in your code?
|
||||
> Oversleep. Made the tea a little too strong? Oversleep. Every one
|
||||
> destabilizes the schedule. I have 3 in one week, that's it. Impractical,
|
||||
> totally impractical. Better than Uberman, though.
|
||||
|
||||
Another one:
|
||||
|
||||
> Impatience is really getting annoying. Except for the short core I can't skip
|
||||
> any time at all anymore. If something takes 6 hours, like a download for
|
||||
> example, I will be awake (almost) all the time and have to wait. Every.
|
||||
> Minute. Of. It. You see everything pass. Someone just went to bed and you want
|
||||
> to talk about something? Prepare to sit there, for 8 hours or more, fully
|
||||
> awake. Wrote some email and await an answer? You'll have memorized 500 digits
|
||||
> of π before you get it. You can't skip anything, can't just hibernate a few
|
||||
> hours. Once the sun went down, you'll sit in darkness, for 14 hours and more
|
||||
> right now. If you are not president by day, superhero by night and mad
|
||||
> scientist on the side, you'll be bored right out of your skull. Your puny
|
||||
> hobbies are not enough for The Night That Never Ends, mortal!
|
||||
|
||||
This was actually my main motivation to become polyphasic. I just had too many
|
||||
hobbies and needed way more time. And when polyphasic sleep works, you feel like
|
||||
on cocaine, finishing the work that takes your friends weeks during one 40 hour
|
||||
weekend. I even started picking up another language just to have something to
|
||||
do! But then, after a while, your brain is completely overloaded and you just
|
||||
crash. So it _is_ just like cocaine, really.
|
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|
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[puredoxyk]: http://www.puredoxyk.com
|
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% Speed Reading
|
||||
|
||||
Wait, what? Speed reading? Isn't that pseudoscience? Partially, sure. However,
|
||||
not all of it, and that really surprised me. Yes, speed reading *is* real. This
|
||||
is my collection of useful hacks.
|
||||
|
||||
Hacking your brain for fun and profit
|
||||
=====================================
|
||||
|
||||
Binocular Rivalry
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
While working through [Consciousness Explained] by Daniel Dennett, I encountered
|
||||
several experiments that I doubted. So I tried to replicate them. Specifically,
|
||||
binocular rivalry seemed weird to me. Binocular rivalry occurs when each of
|
||||
your eyes sees a different thing, typically achieved by just setting up a
|
||||
barrier between them, and showing different pictures to each, e.g. horizontal
|
||||
stripes on the left and vertical stripes on the right, or different letters or
|
||||
faces and so on. What happens is that occasionally one side will dominate over
|
||||
the other and you will only be conscious of it. Most commonly, at first you
|
||||
kinda see both sides, then they partially merge, in a very patchy way, and
|
||||
suddenly your vision _flips_, i.e. one side becomes clear and the other turns
|
||||
invisible. This process then alternates randomly, unless even a slight
|
||||
disruption is introduced to one side, like a moving dot, which causes this side
|
||||
to become dominant immediately.
|
||||
|
||||
Allegedly, you may control which side is dominant most of the time, but you can
|
||||
not be conscious of both reliably. I didn't believe that and tested it by trying
|
||||
to read two texts simultaneously. In fact, I actually managed to do that! The
|
||||
main visual problem is focus. It is quite hard to have each eye focus a
|
||||
different thing, but using e.g. [DXM], you can actually pull that off. But even
|
||||
without it, you can try to focus a middle point and just make the letters big
|
||||
enough so that you can read them even out-of-focus. The real problem comes from
|
||||
assembling two sources of input into separate sentences; at first, they always
|
||||
mixed and I couldn't understand anything.
|
||||
|
||||
Being Myselves
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
I then controlled for that by using series of numbers and suddenly I was able to
|
||||
read to things at the same time! For a while, rivalry happened a lot, but soon I
|
||||
got into mental soft focus and could read (but not parse sentences) just fine. I
|
||||
then speculated that I might be able to exploit both halves of my brain. In
|
||||
split-brain patients, who don't have a connection between their left and right
|
||||
hemisphere, you actually get two independent consciousnesses and I did read up
|
||||
on people that tried to induce this with normal brains.
|
||||
|
||||
Because the left side of vision (i.e. left in both eyes) is handled by the right
|
||||
hemisphere and vice versa, you can wear glasses that have either their left half
|
||||
on each glass blocked by tape or the right side, and only give visual input to
|
||||
one. This actually causes a significant effect if your two hemispheres are
|
||||
currently in disagreement. Some people with depression or anxiety were able to
|
||||
reduce it or turn it almost off temporarily while wearing such glasses! So for
|
||||
example, you feel very nervous with your therapist, block the left side,
|
||||
everything is the same, then instead block the right side, wosh!, your anxiety
|
||||
is gone. It comes right back when you take the glasses off, but still, way cool!
|
||||
|
||||
So by being able to make each hemisphere dominant at will, you can really fuck
|
||||
with your mood. Find where your language side is (typically the left hemisphere,
|
||||
thus the right side of vision) and block it - you become more empathetic and
|
||||
reading gets harder. Block the other, reading is normal, but relating to content
|
||||
is harder. The effect is typically not that large because both sides are still
|
||||
internally connected, but I found it quite noticeable.
|
||||
|
||||
Anyway, I tried to improve on binocular reading by separating not only between
|
||||
eyes, but sides of vision. Let my left half of my left eye read one thing and
|
||||
the right half of my right eye another. Focus gets really tricky that way, but
|
||||
it is doable. And lo and behold, I could, albeit slowly, read two things at
|
||||
once! Parallel processing, bitches!
|
||||
|
||||
What's that all got to do with speed reading?!
|
||||
----------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Binocular reading isn't really practical (for one, you look ridiculous, two,
|
||||
it's very difficult and slow), but I got interested in *other* ways I could hack
|
||||
my reading process. If I can read in parallel, can I also read non-linearly?
|
||||
Start in the middle of a sentence, jump around and still get it? Read really
|
||||
really fast? Maybe subconsciously?
|
||||
|
||||
Now we're getting there! First, let me clarify one thing: speed reading literature
|
||||
is a complete and total *mess*. Barely anything scientific, vague claims, lots
|
||||
of lies and false promises, no clear terms, nothing. To remedy this, I'm going
|
||||
to state *exactly* what I mean and what this is about:
|
||||
|
||||
Speed reading involves any technique that makes you read a normal text faster
|
||||
**without sacrificing comprehension**. No, it's not **skimming**: that only
|
||||
tries to give you a basic overview of the text. The idea is to be able to
|
||||
understand the text just as if you had read it "normally", even though the
|
||||
process of getting there may be very different.
|
||||
|
||||
But what can be achieved? First, measure your current reading speed. Say, pick a
|
||||
Wikipedia article, read it, time yourself and then count the words. Average
|
||||
among most people is about *200-250wpm* (words per minute). Good college
|
||||
students read at about *300-350wpm*. A fast conventional reader gets up to
|
||||
*500wpm*, maybe *600wpm* if they are really good. Speed reading, on the other
|
||||
hand, falls into a range of about *800 to 1400wpm*. Because a normal page in a
|
||||
book has about 350 to 450 words, depending on font size, people typically read
|
||||
about 30 pages per hour, college students about 50 to 60 and speed readers about
|
||||
150 to 250. Those numbers are of course averaged over a lengthy text and don't
|
||||
have to be constant - a difficult paragraph may slow you down and a simple one
|
||||
may just fly by.
|
||||
|
||||
What about **comprehension**? There are two components to it: **understanding**
|
||||
the text and **remembering** it. Understanding means being able to follow it,
|
||||
being able to give a summary of it and so on. Remembering involves still knowing
|
||||
details, all characters or arguments involved and so on.
|
||||
|
||||
I am only interested in techniques that *maintain* a high level of
|
||||
comprehension, typically a retention of 80-90% of the content. Sacrificing
|
||||
quantity for quality is right out. Nonetheless, it is still true that topics
|
||||
that are difficult to understand will always be read slowly, no matter the
|
||||
technique used. Reading about theoretical physics will be slow unless you have
|
||||
studied it. No speed reading technique will fix this problem. Most texts,
|
||||
however, fit nicely into your rough skill level and the limiting factor is, in
|
||||
fact, your reading, not your understanding.
|
||||
|
||||
Related to that, a common objection to speed reading is that it kills the
|
||||
enjoyment, or that maybe you are just reading too easy texts. "Why hurry
|
||||
something good?" I don't agree with this sentiment *at all*. If you enjoy
|
||||
reading so much, why not read at 1 sentence per hour? Why not watch Star Trek at
|
||||
one scene per day? What, that would be mind-numbingly boring? Why yes it would!
|
||||
Also, if you increase your throughput, you become able to handle more complex
|
||||
structures. A series filling thousands of pages is suddenly just as manageable
|
||||
as a comic book was before. Reading up on moral philosophy by reading works
|
||||
by/about the 10 or 20 most influential thinkers over the course of a week or two
|
||||
is doable. Books become what Wikipedia articles were before. So if you don't
|
||||
like high bandwidth and all the benefits that come with it, this just isn't for
|
||||
you.
|
||||
|
||||
Finally, a note on **subvocalization**. When reading, there are basically 4
|
||||
different ways with regards to sound:
|
||||
|
||||
1. *Reading out loud*. This is what beginners may do, or what you do when
|
||||
reading to someone. It was actually quite common in ancient times and the
|
||||
idea that you could read silently was very weird to many Romans.
|
||||
2. *Reading to yourself internally*. You basically still do the same thing,
|
||||
including moving your tongue, but you don't produce a sound. This is often a
|
||||
transitional period for early readers (and make no mistake: for every
|
||||
language I learned, I went through that phase again). It will disappear with
|
||||
practice.
|
||||
3. *Subvocalization*. You still *hear* the sound, but you don't feel that you
|
||||
produce it. Muscle movement doesn't exist (at least not any you would notice)
|
||||
and speed is greatly improved. You often skip words, or only hint at the
|
||||
sound. This is the normal mode for most people to be in, even many deaf (who
|
||||
often are not 100% deaf), and this is the *inner voice* most of us use to
|
||||
think.
|
||||
4. *Reading in silence*. Finally, reading without hearing any associated sound.
|
||||
No inner voice, but direct meaning, just as you look at a map, for example.
|
||||
Because visual processing is, for almost everyone, vastly superior to aural
|
||||
processing you can read much faster that way. Personally, I believe that the
|
||||
problem is that understanding an inner or outer voice is necessarily
|
||||
sequential, but the brain never *is* sequential, it is always parallel, so it
|
||||
simulates it. This is quite slow. Visual processing, on the other hand, is
|
||||
not - you can parse many parts of an image or scene at the same time and only
|
||||
coordinate results at the very end. Also, your visual hardware is far more
|
||||
optimized and greater in size.
|
||||
|
||||
Techniques
|
||||
==========
|
||||
|
||||
The Conventional Approach - How to read fast the normal way
|
||||
-----------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The easiest hack is to just read faster - you do everything you'd normally do,
|
||||
just faster. As I mentioned, you can go up to about 600wpm that way. When I was
|
||||
starting out with speed reading, I was already reading at 450wpm. How did I get
|
||||
that fast?
|
||||
|
||||
I could credit reading practice. I do read a lot, especially on the web, but
|
||||
that's not all that plausible. I know enough people who easily read just as much
|
||||
as I was reading at 14 years of age, and I was reading about 400wpm back then,
|
||||
too. Sure, you need to be fully fluent in a language to do that, but most people
|
||||
never seem to go beyond 300wpm, no matter how much practice they have reading
|
||||
texts.
|
||||
|
||||
So what *do* I credit? Video games. I'm serious. I played a *lot* of shooters
|
||||
and racing games and this really improves your ability to react *fast* and react
|
||||
to inputs from *anywhere* in your field of vision. You are also forced to shift
|
||||
your attention around a lot and figure out threats as fast as you can. I also
|
||||
notice that in anyone I know that played a lot of fast games: Their attention
|
||||
jumps around a lot faster than normal, no matter what they are working on.
|
||||
|
||||
The typical example is taking a gaming teenager and having their teacher watch.
|
||||
Give the teen a computer menu to figure out, or a form to fill out or something
|
||||
like this, and watch how desperately the teacher tries to keep up, even though
|
||||
the teacher surely has plenty more reading practice. Still, no chance
|
||||
whatsoever, and the same goes for all non-gaming teens. But any gamer will have
|
||||
no problem, no matter the age.
|
||||
|
||||
So if you read only 200 or 300wpm, you are not playing enough. Get Quake 3 or Halo or
|
||||
Starcraft, a big supply of caffeine and *train*. After a while, your reading
|
||||
speed will pick up, I'm certain of it. Some people, especially those with ADHD,
|
||||
may be better at this than others, but most gamers I know read fast, no matter
|
||||
what their attention span normally is.
|
||||
|
||||
Turning off subvocalization
|
||||
---------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Chunking
|
||||
--------
|
||||
|
||||
I highly recommend [Look, Ma; No Hands!], a book that teaches semantic chunking
|
||||
very well. (And it's short and precise. You get results very fast.)
|
||||
|
||||
Once you read at a very high speed, it really makes a huge difference how large
|
||||
your chunks are. Here's a little demonstration:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Both animations run at the same reading speed of 1000wpm, but the first one
|
||||
shows every word on its own, while the second one uses groups of 4.
|
||||
|
||||
Once you go beyond about 10 chunks / second, visual processing starts lagging
|
||||
behind more and more. After-images, too slow eye movement and so on start
|
||||
interfering with your reading. This means you can read maybe 600wpm if you read
|
||||
every word on its own, but increasing your chunk size from just 1 to 2
|
||||
immediately doubles your speed! The benefit is obvious, so pacing trade-offs
|
||||
when increasing chunk size are often worth it.
|
||||
|
||||
The highest possible chunk size, according to all sources I read, seems to be
|
||||
about one paragraph, which is about 100 to 150 words long. I suspect that a main
|
||||
problem here is the size of the area you can keep in focus. Chunking a whole
|
||||
page at once is probably impossible because you could never get all words to be
|
||||
sharp and readable.
|
||||
|
||||
Font Size
|
||||
---------
|
||||
|
||||
You can only succesfully chunk if you can actually get enough words into focus.
|
||||
|
||||
I was often reading texts at very high font sizes, like 30pt or so. Hey, I have
|
||||
bad eye sight and sit quite far away from my monitors. But I found that this
|
||||
makes it really hard to read fast, so I fixed my setup. I moved my monitors a
|
||||
lot closer and decreased my font size. *A lot*.
|
||||
|
||||
In my experience, a font size of 12pt (assuming normal DPI) is the *largest* you
|
||||
want to use. I currently read websites at 10pt, which seems to be the best
|
||||
compromise between readability and strain on the eyes. (I also find it hard to
|
||||
read Japanese below 10pt. There just aren't enough pixels left.)
|
||||
|
||||
At those sizes, the font used matters a lot. I've always been very fond of the
|
||||
Microsoft fonts, even though I haven't run any of their systems for years.
|
||||
Regardless, experiment and use something that is clean and very easy to read.
|
||||
|
||||
Speaking of font size, column width matters just as much. It's no use if you see
|
||||
a lot of text, but the current paragraph fits into one huge line across your >20
|
||||
inch display. The maximum line length should be about 100 characters or 20
|
||||
words.
|
||||
|
||||
If you are a console hacker, then I'd also recommend checking out bitmap fonts.
|
||||
They really shine at such sizes. Remember that you can only fix bugs in code
|
||||
that you see. The more lines fit on your screen, the better you can debug.
|
||||
|
||||
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation
|
||||
--------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Woah, that's a big word, when really, it just means "flashing words really
|
||||
fast". RSVP
|
||||
|
||||
Late Binding
|
||||
------------
|
||||
|
||||
Late Binding is a concept from computer science. Basically, instead of resolving
|
||||
what an expression means right away (like when the program is generated), the
|
||||
system waits until the latest possible moment.
|
||||
|
||||
Reading nonlinearly
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[Look, Ma; No Hands!]: http://www.semanticrestructuring.com/lookma.php
|
||||
[Consciousness Explained]: /reflections/con_exp.html
|
||||
[DXM]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXM
|
||||
Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 1.4 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
|
|||
% 嘘とワンダーランド
|
||||
|
||||
Lies and Wonderland
|
||||
===================
|
||||
|
||||
Yet another hypergraphic information whore's site.
|
||||
|
||||
muflax is empty. My [LibraryThing] profile says more about me than I ever could.
|
||||
You may, of course, just read this site to find out more. You can
|
||||
get in [Contact] with me about anything, be it comments, criticisms or
|
||||
corrections.
|
||||
|
||||
Articles are sorted by date, with newer ones at the top. You can see the
|
||||
[Changelog] for any recent changes or subscribe to the [RSS] feed.
|
||||
|
||||
[Experiments]
|
||||
=============
|
||||
|
||||
This is basically my public spoiler file for life. Why should I keep all the
|
||||
cool stuff I found out to myself? Information ought to be free, after all.
|
||||
|
||||
- how to develop [Speed Reading] and read a book in an hour
|
||||
- [Sleep] hacks
|
||||
- some hacks for [Good Sleep]
|
||||
- my experience and criticism of [Polyphasic Sleep]
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[Reflections]
|
||||
=============
|
||||
|
||||
The unobserved life is not worth living.
|
||||
|
||||
- thoughts on Daniel Dennett's book [Consciousness Explained]
|
||||
- [Letting Go of Music]
|
||||
- my review of [Find the Bug]
|
||||
- a bit about [Nicknames]
|
||||
- a meditation on [Xmonad]
|
||||
- [Why I love my SRS], or, How to hack your long-term memory
|
||||
|
||||
[Software]
|
||||
==========
|
||||
|
||||
Some of the stuff I wrote.
|
||||
|
||||
- my [vim] config and complete feature list
|
||||
- [ashuku], a personal statistics tool
|
||||
- [saneo], my keyboard layout
|
||||
|
||||
[Rants]
|
||||
=======
|
||||
|
||||
The fuel of the internet.
|
||||
|
||||
- [Python], I hate your creeping dementia
|
||||
- The [Singularity] is Very Far Away
|
||||
- [Perl], we are finished
|
||||
- [Game Design Sins], because the whole business is incompetent
|
||||
- why [Neo 2] is retarded
|
||||
|
||||
[Changelog]: /changelog.html
|
||||
[RSS]: /rss.xml
|
||||
[Contact]: /about.html
|
||||
[LibraryThing]: http://www.librarything.com/profile/muflax
|
||||
|
||||
[Experiments]: /experiments
|
||||
[Speed Reading]: /experiments/speedreading.html
|
||||
[Sleep]: /experiments/sleep
|
||||
[Good Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/good_sleep.html
|
||||
[Polyphasic Sleep]: /experiments/sleep/polyphasic_sleep.html
|
||||
|
||||
[Rants]: /rants
|
||||
[Game Design Sins]: /rants/game_sins.html
|
||||
[Python]: /rants/python.html
|
||||
[Perl]: /rants/perl.html
|
||||
[Singularity]: /rants/singularity.html
|
||||
[Neo 2]: /rants/neo.html
|
||||
|
||||
[Reflections]: /reflections
|
||||
[Letting Go of Music]: /reflections/letting_go_of_music.html
|
||||
[Consciousness Explained]: /reflections/con_exp.html
|
||||
[Why I love my SRS]: /reflections/srs.html
|
||||
[Xmonad]: /reflections/xmonad.html
|
||||
[Nicknames]: /reflections/nicknames.html
|
||||
[Find the Bug]: /reflections/find_the_bug.html
|
||||
|
||||
[Software]: /software
|
||||
[ashuku]: /software/ashuku.html
|
||||
[saneo]: /software/saneo.html
|
||||
[vim]: /software/vim.html
|
||||
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|
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Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 13 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
|||
title: muflax
|
||||
layout: default.template
|
||||
style: default.css
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,222 @@
|
|||
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|
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||||
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|
||||
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||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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||||
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|
||||
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||||
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||||
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|
||||
=l5Hy
|
||||
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
|||
% Poetry
|
||||
|
||||
when candles turned to ashes, tears shall stop.
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
|
|||
title: Poetry
|
||||
style: poetry.css
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,155 @@
|
|||
% Game Design Sins
|
||||
|
||||
Recently, I've been reading a lot of stuff about game design and I even started
|
||||
playing a few of the games that have been lying around here for positively ages
|
||||
now (アウターワールド (originally Another World), SMB, Dig Dug 2, plenty of
|
||||
stuff on the NDS). I started noticing a small set of Deadly Sins. If a game
|
||||
commits one, it stinks. If the rest is done exceptionally well, it might still
|
||||
be enjoyable, but there already is a bad aftertaste. Commit two or more and
|
||||
it's hopeless. The game is shit. Interestingly, most of them apply to TV as
|
||||
well.
|
||||
|
||||
Shut up already!
|
||||
=================
|
||||
|
||||
Aka Navy syndrome aka All Players Are Retards. Never, ever tell me how to play
|
||||
your game or how all that stupid stuff works or what I'm seeing. "Hey, I bet
|
||||
you can JUMP up there!" "Hey Link, that's a VASE. You can TOUCH it and then
|
||||
THROW it on the ground to SMASH it." Will you shut up already! I can figure it
|
||||
out myself! If your game is so complicated that it needs half a college course
|
||||
to get used to, then your design stinks. If you think I might be to stupid to
|
||||
understand the simplest of concepts, then I don't anything to do with you. If
|
||||
you fear I might miss some part of your awesome game and you need to explain
|
||||
everything to me, then this might be because your game is shallow, stupid and
|
||||
*boring*!
|
||||
|
||||
This applies to more than just gameplay. Ever heard of "show, don't tell"?
|
||||
Doesn't look like it. Never use text (or worse: speech), when you can show.
|
||||
Learn a thing or two from Half Life 2. Instead of telling me about oppression,
|
||||
show it. You *could* go on hours and hours about your angst and loneliness, or
|
||||
you *could* show me one woman desperately waiting at the train station for her
|
||||
husband that will never come. One of the two approaches works, the other is
|
||||
annoying. Can you tell which is which? Never explain and tell, when you can
|
||||
imply and show.
|
||||
|
||||
Now, this doesn't mean "don't talk". I'm a pretty big fan of Planescape:
|
||||
Torment and Arcanum and *boy* do these games talk. But what they have to say is
|
||||
interesting. PS:T never explains any game mechanic. It never explains stuff to
|
||||
you, the player (though it does explain a few things to the main character).
|
||||
Many main plot points are never made explicit at all and lots of information
|
||||
can be missed. If you are not actively looking for it, you might even miss 2
|
||||
of the 3 classes your character can be. So "Shut up already" and 'talky" are
|
||||
not opposites. But when you can do without words, do so.
|
||||
|
||||
Sure, take your time
|
||||
=====================
|
||||
|
||||
Yeah, you have this awesome feature. Say, in your game, you can reverse time at
|
||||
any point. Then it's a good idea to take it slow and don't give me this feature
|
||||
or anything. Let me do a dozen or so tutorial levels first. And talk to me.
|
||||
Maybe a nice, long intro. Or really long loading times. Anything goes, as long
|
||||
as you can prevent the player from *actually enjoying your game*. I'm looking
|
||||
at you, Braid. A couple of minutes before the first enemy, really?
|
||||
|
||||
When I play a game for the first time, I give it about 30, maybe 60 seconds.
|
||||
During this time, something cool has to happen. If it doesn't, that's it. The
|
||||
game is over, it's boring and it can bugger off. Mario's main skill is jumping.
|
||||
How long does it take to jump? A couple of seconds, at most. You move a bit,
|
||||
start running to the right, press a button and there it is. You jump. Or take
|
||||
Another World. You get a short establishing shot of some research lab and the
|
||||
character, 10 seconds later, some weird shit happens and you are sucked into a
|
||||
parallel dimension. You don't know what the fuck is going on and without
|
||||
warning materialize in a pool of water. If you don't react immediately, and you
|
||||
won't because you will still try to figure out what is going on, a bunch of
|
||||
tentacles grabs you and you are dead. Not even a minute in and already dead.
|
||||
You continue, this time swimming up. A strange world awaits you and you are
|
||||
attacked by a beast right away. From this moment on, you will be constantly on
|
||||
the run, trying to survive. You are never given a chance to get bored. If it
|
||||
weren't for the intro, I'd mention God of War, too. You are thrown right into
|
||||
a battle and encounter your first boss within 2 minutes or so. That's how it
|
||||
should be.
|
||||
|
||||
You know what? It's not enough for something cool to happen. I, the player,
|
||||
must do something cool. Which brings me to the next sin.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Don't let me play the game
|
||||
===========================
|
||||
|
||||
Take control away from me at any time you feel like it. Throw in a cutscene! Let
|
||||
the character do something automatically that I could have done instead. Even
|
||||
better, let another character do it for me! In a cutscene!
|
||||
|
||||
I get it. You are way cooler than I could ever be. It's for my own best if you
|
||||
do all the awesome stuff and I just watch. Like in Oblivion, where the final
|
||||
battle is fought between two NPCs in a cutscene. Don't get any of this hideous
|
||||
game stuff in your movie, Mister Game Designer. It could be, you know, *fun*.
|
||||
|
||||
Big Numbers
|
||||
===========
|
||||
|
||||
It's really important for any self-respecting game to have as many Big Numbers
|
||||
as possible. You must have 16x anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, 50,000
|
||||
polygons per character, not just one, but several layers of shaders and at least
|
||||
10 different buttons and if you can count the number of axes on one hand, than
|
||||
it's not enough and you need to throw in another analog stick. NOT.
|
||||
|
||||
Pick one
|
||||
feature. Do this one feature well. SMB has 2 buttons and one D-pad.
|
||||
Portal can do with 3 buttons (blue / orange portal and grab). If
|
||||
you need much more than that, you are doing it wrong. If you think
|
||||
that a top-notch graphics engine matters at all, you are doing it
|
||||
wrong. Many designers seem to think that the less people can
|
||||
actually play their game, the better. Especially PC games are
|
||||
affected by this. Many modern games run on less than 1% of all
|
||||
machines. That's, like, really smart. And don't even get me started
|
||||
on DRM and digital distribution (read: renting games). But anyone
|
||||
who thinks that publishing games on the PC is a good thing in the
|
||||
first place must be insane.
|
||||
|
||||
I like buttons
|
||||
==============
|
||||
|
||||
This is the one that I understand the least. Don't people *play* the games they
|
||||
make? Then how come many are so cumbersome and slow to use? Buttons after
|
||||
buttons, multiple seconds of blackout between each screen and a HUD that was
|
||||
seemingly designed on LSD. The one that really annoys me right now is
|
||||
Scribblenauts. If you want to change your avatar in the middle of the game, you
|
||||
have to go through *5* menus and then go all the way back again. Fail a puzzle
|
||||
and you have to not just watch the introduction again, but click away a pop-up,
|
||||
too. Every. Single. Time. How do they test this? Didn't someone try to smash
|
||||
their NDS after a week or so of playtesting and trying a puzzle over and over
|
||||
again?
|
||||
|
||||
Rape the setting
|
||||
================
|
||||
|
||||
To be fair, this sin is not as common as the other ones, but it's so horrible
|
||||
that it is a complete deal breaker for me. I'm not talking about "Don't dare to
|
||||
be different when working in an established franchise!" bullshit. What I mean is
|
||||
the sheer lack of respect for what you are creating. A good example would be
|
||||
Jade "make it Asian, but not *too* Asian" Empire. Or Fallout 3. Inconsistent
|
||||
worlds that don't have any kind of respect for themselves. Throw in whatever
|
||||
crap you can think of. Pile stereotype on stereotype. I don't want to drift into
|
||||
a violent rant about constant sexism, racism and just plain ignorance about
|
||||
anything, or offering "moral choices" that only a 3 year old could think of as
|
||||
intriguing ("Do you want to be a *NICE GUY* or a *BIG MEANIE*?"), or making
|
||||
characters expendable and "funny", or throwing in stuff because a market
|
||||
analysis indicates that the target demography might want it (and not because you
|
||||
like it or anything), or confusing violence with maturity, or..., so I'll stop
|
||||
here.
|
||||
|
||||
Just... don't. I've played enough games that even /b/ couldn't have made more
|
||||
stupid and offensive. Just stop it already, ok?
|
||||
|
||||
Bad Actors
|
||||
===========
|
||||
|
||||
Voice acting. Nuff said. Bad writing is one thing (and not necessarily a show
|
||||
stopper because games don't always need writing). But bad actors physically
|
||||
hurt. In my paradise, I'm allowed to club 3 line-readers to death with a metal
|
||||
reinforced Model M keyboard per day. I'm going to start with Bethesda, then work
|
||||
through the entire JRPG genre and finally take out however voices the people in
|
||||
FPS cutscenes. You guys make my ears bleed. Take some classes, seriously. You
|
||||
*suck*. And insist on getting your lines in context, please, so that you can at
|
||||
least pretend you could convey any emotion at all.
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
|
|||
% Rants
|
||||
|
||||
Rants
|
||||
=====
|
||||
|
||||
The fuel of the internet.
|
||||
|
||||
- [Python], I hate your creeping dementia
|
||||
- The [Singularity] is Very Far Away
|
||||
- [Perl], we are finished
|
||||
- [Game Design Sins], because the whole business is incompetent
|
||||
- why [Neo 2] is retarded
|
||||
|
||||
[Game Design Sins]: /rants/game_sins.html
|
||||
[Python]: /rants/python.html
|
||||
[Perl]: /rants/perl.html
|
||||
[Singularity]: /rants/singularity.html
|
||||
[Neo 2]: /rants/neo.html
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1 @@
|
|||
title: Rants
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
|
|||
% Why NEO 2 is retarded
|
||||
|
||||
[Neo 2] claims to be an ergonomic keyboard layout. I have been using it until
|
||||
about a month ago when I forked it and created my own layout, [saneo]. I don't
|
||||
contend its claim as far as the letters are concerned. However, level 3 aka
|
||||
Mod3, containing the punctuation characters, is totally fucked up. How fucked
|
||||
up? Let me demonstrate.
|
||||
|
||||
First, let's get some data. What's a typical use for Mod3? Programming and
|
||||
normal texts. I decided on analyzing C (representing curly-bracket languages),
|
||||
Python (representing pseudo-code and list languages), my shell history and shell
|
||||
files (representing Unix usage) and Perl (representing line noise).
|
||||
Additionally, I included my local Usenet cache to represent normal texts. I took
|
||||
several thousand files each and in the end averaged them all together.
|
||||
|
||||
Second, we do a little experiment. Say, if Neo 2 is actually ergonomically
|
||||
optimized, we would expect the most frequent characters to be on the easiest to
|
||||
reach positions. Of course, it depends a little on personal taste, keyboard form
|
||||
and hand size how easy each position is, but let's go with the arrangement the
|
||||
Neo devs chose for their letters.
|
||||
|
||||
If the layout is optimized, the most frequent letters and the most frequent
|
||||
punctuation characters should be on the same physical keys. Let's see if this is
|
||||
true. Here is a little table, showing the letters sorted by (German) frequency
|
||||
and the corresponding Mod3 character. I've put the keys with "." and ","
|
||||
according to their left-hand equivalent. Green means 5% or more, yellow down to
|
||||
1.5% and the rest is red (which is often around .01%). Have a look.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Great fucking job, guys. The 7 best keys get only 2 frequent characters. 6
|
||||
frequent characters are in the middle of fucking nowhere. You decided to place
|
||||
an obsolete character, the long S, that no one in my fucking news cache even
|
||||
used *at all*, in a better position than **,**, **.**, **"**, **'**[^3] and
|
||||
**\#**, which together make up a good **40%** of all punctuation. [^0]
|
||||
|
||||
The one character that is more frequent in many cases than any letter except the
|
||||
friggin' E, and more frequent than 2/3 of the letters in general, the
|
||||
underscore, isn't even anywhere near a good position.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Way to go, Neo, way to go.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
[^0]: Some of the reasoning behind this is that any Mod1 key is
|
||||
easier to reach than any Mod3 key. If you think that Mod3+N is harder to
|
||||
type than Ö, then I wouldn't let you design *a wooden stick* because it
|
||||
seems your brain is barely able to use
|
||||
2 fingers at the same time.
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: "But I don't program! I rarely need an underscore!" But you constantly use
|
||||
curly brackets, more often than any other bracket?!
|
||||
|
||||
[^2]: To be fair, it's impossible to optimize for punctuation-heavy
|
||||
curly-bracket languages and normal text at the same time. However, this
|
||||
half-assed mess makes it hard for *both* groups. That's clearly not a good
|
||||
solution. I chose to optimize for the programming languages because a) I use
|
||||
them more and b) they tend to be so rich in punctuation that they simply
|
||||
overshadow normal text.
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: Which are not even normal punctuation, if the Neo devs weren't so
|
||||
inconsistent in their design. If you want to follow official guidelines (but
|
||||
only prescriptionist dipshits would want to), you should use the German
|
||||
quotation marks „ and “, and the proper accent ’. Which are even harder to
|
||||
reach. Which makes the whole thing even more retarded.
|
||||
|
||||
[Neo 2]: http://neo-layout.org/
|
||||
|
||||
[saneo]: /software/saneo.html
|
||||
Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 17 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
|
|||
% Perl
|
||||
|
||||
Perl, we're finished. I want nothing to do with you, ever again.
|
||||
|
||||
I'd like to say "It's not you; it's me.", but this wouldn't be true. It *is*
|
||||
you. You just suck beyond reason, suck more than I could have ever imagined.
|
||||
|
||||
You know, Perl. It's the year 2010. Unicode is almost 20 years old. Do you speak
|
||||
it? Of course not. So why do you pretend you do?
|
||||
|
||||
You lie to me. "man perlretut" tells me:
|
||||
|
||||
> \\w matches a word character (alphanumeric or \_), not just [0-9a-zA-Z\_] but
|
||||
> also digits and characters from non-roman scripts
|
||||
|
||||
But you don't. "\\w+" doesn't match any Japanese string whatsoever. Not even
|
||||
"Freischütz". Like, really.
|
||||
|
||||
I tell you, explicitely, to use Unicode. You don't. You match what the fuck you
|
||||
want to match. You really don't care at all.
|
||||
|
||||
Nor can you handle Unicode in a string anyway. You don't understand how long it
|
||||
is. Or how to print it correctly. Or how to split it. Nothing.
|
||||
|
||||
Perl, it's over. I'm leaving. And I'm not coming back.
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
|
|||
% Stuff I hate about Python
|
||||
|
||||
Python may be my favorite language, but there sure are some things seriously
|
||||
wrong with it.
|
||||
|
||||
(This is all Python 3.1 code, unless otherwise noted.)
|
||||
|
||||
Discordianism
|
||||
=============
|
||||
|
||||
I thought a bit about which programming language is the most Discordian one, and
|
||||
it must be Python. "Python?! Python is clear and precise, how can it be
|
||||
Discordian?! Shouldn't it be something like Brainfuck, or Malbolge, or PHP?" No,
|
||||
those are simply evil. They are, in Discordian lingo, destructive chaos. But a
|
||||
proper Discordian language must be creatively chaotic, instead. Instead of just
|
||||
screwing up because of incompetence or malice, it needs to actively take apart
|
||||
order to achieve something greater.
|
||||
|
||||
"So why not Perl, or maybe Ruby? They sure have a culture that looks very
|
||||
Discordian." True, but that's exactly the problem: you can not mindfuck someone
|
||||
if they are _expecting_ it. A [Bavarian Fire Drill] doesn't work if you prepare
|
||||
people for it. It works only _because_ it is a completely legit action in
|
||||
_absolutely the wrong context_.
|
||||
|
||||
And that's why you need a language that pretends to be serious and orderly, but
|
||||
that can also go all Eris on your ass. Like Python. Lemme show you them:
|
||||
|
||||
> GP: Is Eris true?
|
||||
> M2: Everything is true.
|
||||
> GP: Even false things?
|
||||
> M2: Even false things are true.
|
||||
> GP: How can that be?
|
||||
> M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
|
||||
> -- [Principia Discordia]
|
||||
|
||||
In Python 2.x, you can do:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
True = False
|
||||
# This enables us to do:
|
||||
if True:
|
||||
print "All Hail Eris!"
|
||||
if False:
|
||||
print "And Ewige Blumenkraft!"
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Even more fun, add a little
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
True, False = False, True
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
to your code and enjoy the confusion and self-doubt the next maintainer will
|
||||
face! (Or add it to your own code while drunk, making sure to forget about it
|
||||
afterwards!)[^haskell]
|
||||
|
||||
[^haskell]: On the other hand, there's Haskell, which allows you to redefine
|
||||
functions in a context, so that you can have
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.haskell}
|
||||
let 2 + 2 = 5
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
, which is very Orwellian indeed.
|
||||
|
||||
Pokemon-Speak
|
||||
=============
|
||||
|
||||
What I mean is stuff like this:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
import datetime
|
||||
|
||||
d = datetime.datetime(2012, 12, 21)
|
||||
now = datetime.datetime.now()
|
||||
dt = (d - now).days
|
||||
print("Only {} days left until the end of the world!".format(dt))
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Sure, I can abbreviate it, but that obfuscates the code somewhat. Related to
|
||||
this is the explicit _self_. I mean, seriously? Sure, it makes it clear what you
|
||||
are calling, but still, stuff like this really gets on my nerves:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
def make_website(self):
|
||||
self.make_html_files(self.src, self.dst)
|
||||
self.make_css_files(self.src, self.dst)
|
||||
self.upload(self.ftp)
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Half that code is just pure noise!
|
||||
|
||||
Long Code is Long
|
||||
=================
|
||||
|
||||
"There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it." leads to
|
||||
some seriously overlong code sometimes. I mean, the shortest way to check
|
||||
whether a file is newer than another is this:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
import datetime, os
|
||||
|
||||
def a_newer_than_b(a, b):
|
||||
return (datetimet.datetime.fromtimestamp(os.stat(a).st_mtime)
|
||||
> datetimet.datetime.fromtimestamp(os.stat(b).st_mtime))
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
This is a bad joke. In Perl, you do "if ($a -ot $b) {...}". Why can't I have
|
||||
something just as simple?
|
||||
|
||||
Another good example is some list comprehension inconsistency. I can do:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
l = [x for x in haystack if isinstance(x, Needle)]
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
, but I can't do:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.python}
|
||||
for f in files if os.path.exists(f):
|
||||
mangle(f)
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
Why not?
|
||||
|
||||
[Bavarian Fire Drill]: http://s23.org/wiki/Bavarian_Fire_Drill
|
||||
[Principia Discordia]: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/6.php
|
||||
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|
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|
|
@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
|
|||
% The Singularity is Near!
|
||||
|
||||
The Singularity is Near! (and alle so: yeah...)
|
||||
===============================================
|
||||
|
||||
Science fiction is dead to me. I can not stand the weak ethics, ridiculous
|
||||
predictions, massive biases and total disconnect with science since at least 50
|
||||
years any more. At first, that depressed me a little. Losing a whole genre is
|
||||
always tragic, but I have survived the death of horror; I will make it without
|
||||
science fiction, too. But actually, I found something to replace it with:
|
||||
Futurology! In fact, retro-futurology. Find some futurologist, at least some
|
||||
years old, and compare their vision of the future with now - it will be
|
||||
hilariously wrong! No exceptions. Kurzweil is amazing in that he is wrong even
|
||||
after only half a decade! Clarke at least is sometimes correct when predicting
|
||||
stuff half a century away, but Kurzweil couldn't even design a five-year-plan
|
||||
for a socialist utopia. He even gets his own data wrong in determining the date
|
||||
for the singularity. That's mind-boggling. It's really takes a special kind of
|
||||
intelligence to be so stupid. Based on [JBR]'s scoring system, I'll award
|
||||
between 0 to 1 point per prediction, depending on how good it was. Of course, I
|
||||
only rate predictions that can already be judged (and exclude those that are so
|
||||
vacuus that they don't say anything at all, like "The rate of paradigm shift
|
||||
(technical innovation) is accelerating, right now doubling every decade.").
|
||||
"Partially borrowed" from Wikipedia.
|
||||
|
||||
[JBR]: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/retro/
|
||||
|
||||
1. "We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with
|
||||
supercomputers by the end of this decade." Not even a single component of
|
||||
the brain can be emulated. 0 points.
|
||||
2. "Automatic Speech-Recognition Software with good accuracy in 2000." Muahaha.
|
||||
This one is a postdiction and yet, "good"? Yeah, right. Well, it isn't
|
||||
entirely awful, but "good"?! 0.5 points.
|
||||
3. "Computers will start to disappear as distinct physical objects, meaning
|
||||
many will have nontraditional shapes or will be embedded in clothing and
|
||||
everyday objects." No. I still don't have a fridge that orders new milk and
|
||||
I've been promised one since I was born! 0 points.
|
||||
4. "Full-immersion audio-visual virtual reality will exist." No. In fact,
|
||||
entertainment systems are rapidly moving away from "immersion" (thank
|
||||
gods!). As far as I know, there isn't any full-immersion for training
|
||||
purposes either. 0 points.
|
||||
5. "Glasses that beam images onto the users' retinas to produce virtual reality
|
||||
will be developed." Alright, "developed" is correct, but in actual use?
|
||||
Personally, I expect VR to be integrated into phones instead. 0.5 points.
|
||||
6. "Real-time language translation in which words spoken in a foreign language
|
||||
would be translated into text that would appear as subtitles to a user
|
||||
wearing the glasses." Muahahaha! The smartest company on the planet, Google,
|
||||
can't even correctly generate subtitles in the *same* language. 0 points.
|
||||
7. "Cell phones will be built into clothing and will be able to project sounds
|
||||
directly into the ears of their users." Yeah, right. 0 points.
|
||||
8. "Exoskeletal, robotic leg prostheses allow the paraplegic to walk." Ok,
|
||||
prototypes exist and work well. The reason they are still rare isn't so much
|
||||
the robot, but rather the energy source. 1 point.
|
||||
9. "Telephone calls are routinely screened by intelligent answering machines
|
||||
that ask questions to determine the call's nature and priority." If only! 0
|
||||
points.
|
||||
10. "'Cybernetic chauffeurs' can drive cars for humans." Even humans can't drive
|
||||
well, but robots are going to do it before they have mastered *vision*?!
|
||||
That's... optimistic. 0 points.
|
||||
11. "The classroom is dominated by computers." No, just no. Laptops might have
|
||||
replaced paper notebooks by now, but it's very rare for a teacher to be even
|
||||
aware of useful software, like SRS. 0 points. Personal prediction: this
|
||||
won't be true, ever. School will go extinct before teachers apply science to
|
||||
their job.
|
||||
12. "A small number of highly skilled people dominates the entire production
|
||||
sector." Yes and no. Specialization is going strong, but companies are also
|
||||
larger than ever. 0.5 points.
|
||||
13. "Tailoring of products for individuals is common." To a degree and for a
|
||||
price, yes. 0.75 points.
|
||||
14. "Drugs are designed and tested in simulations that mimic the human body."
|
||||
Nope. This is impossible *in principle*. You can only simulate what you
|
||||
understand well; understanding by simulation is a contradiction in terms.
|
||||
You must know the detailed rules of a system to simulate it well (small
|
||||
derivations will often lead to largely different results), but then you
|
||||
already understand it. 0 points.
|
||||
15. "Blind people navigate and read text using machines that can visually
|
||||
recognize features of their environment." Nope. Unless you count "dogs" as
|
||||
machines. Because, face it, that's how good you have to be to compete on
|
||||
this market. 0 points.
|
||||
16. "PCs are capable of answering queries by accessing information wirelessly
|
||||
via the Internet." 1 point.
|
||||
17. "By 2020, there will be a new world government." While there is still some
|
||||
time, just think of all the paperwork! The UN is breaking apart, the EU is
|
||||
becoming irrelevant and there aren't any two superpowers speaking with each
|
||||
other. I think we can judge this one. 0 points.
|
||||
|
||||
Alright, that's about it. 3.75 out of 17. I especially like that he is still
|
||||
convinced that translation software is *just around the corner*. Yes, futurology
|
||||
will fill the void left by science fiction nicely. \*chuckles\*
|
||||
|
||||
Holy Cow!
|
||||
========
|
||||
|
||||
I studied Kurzweil's analysis a bit more in-depth and finally realized - by
|
||||
gods, the man is right! If you plot major milestones, you can clearly see a
|
||||
trend! Unfortunately, Kurzweil's plot is a little outdated and some details are
|
||||
wrong, so I updated it. Here is his version:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Here is the fixed version:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I can see it now! The Sincowlarity is near! Transbovines are already emerging!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Kurzweil, you are a genius!
|
||||
Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 21 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,542 @@
|
|||
% Consciousness Explained
|
||||
|
||||
This is a little series of thoughts on the book "Consciousness Explained" by
|
||||
Daniel Dennett. I was having a lot of problems the first time through and gave
|
||||
up in a rage, but enough people I respect recommend the book.
|
||||
|
||||
So to find out if it's just me and my personal bias, I started to read it again,
|
||||
giving Dennett more credit than before. I comment on most of the book, but might
|
||||
skip parts I simply agree with and have nothing to say about. I planned to have
|
||||
at least a detailed criticism the second time through, but actually was
|
||||
influenced so much by it that it quite literally changed my life and whole way
|
||||
of thinking, trying to sort it all out and somehow refute Dennett.
|
||||
|
||||
Hallucinations
|
||||
==============
|
||||
|
||||
The Brain in a Vat
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
They say you only get to make first impressions once and oh boy did Dennett make
|
||||
some! The book starts off with a little introduction to the old "brain in the
|
||||
vat" thought experiment. Just 5 pages in and I'm already raging about Dennett's
|
||||
sloppiness and faulty reasoning.
|
||||
|
||||
Let's take it one mistake at a time: He begins by differentiating between
|
||||
"possible in principle" and "possible in fact"[^det], saying that while an
|
||||
incredibly (or even infinitely) powerful entity *could* keep your brain in a vat
|
||||
and fool you into believing their illusion, any remotely plausible being
|
||||
couldn't do so, therefore we can safely dismiss the argument. I'm going to
|
||||
address the plausibility next, but first something about the argument itself.
|
||||
|
||||
If you are the prisoner of a powerful trickster, then you *can not tell* what
|
||||
tools they have available. You don't know anything about their universe. They
|
||||
main idea of running a convincing simulation is exactly that you do not give the
|
||||
victim any external reference! You do not get to assume that "yesterday was
|
||||
real", but "today looks different, maybe I was kidnapped by mad neurologists?".
|
||||
*Any* information you have ever been given can be part of the simulation; that
|
||||
is exactly *the point of running one*.
|
||||
|
||||
Maybe they have access to infinite energy? Their universe could very well be
|
||||
infinite. You have no way of knowing how many resources they have because, by
|
||||
definition, you can not see their universe. You can estimate a lower bound, but
|
||||
that's about it. You can not even tell if *any* property of your simulation is
|
||||
like the world the trickster is in. They can impose any logic, any amount of
|
||||
resources (provided they have more) they want. Want to run the simulation as a
|
||||
finite world? No problem. Impose fake concreteness, enforcing quantization of
|
||||
any property? Makes the source code a whole lot easier! Let information travel
|
||||
only at a limited speed to simplify the calculations? Sure. Because you don't
|
||||
even have to run it in real time, you can enforce any speed you want, even a
|
||||
faster one than you have in your world! The "real" world could look so utterly
|
||||
alien to us that we would have to call it supernatural. And then all bets are
|
||||
off. But Dennett doesn't even pretend to address this. In fact, it looks like he
|
||||
isn't even aware of the literature. This is a staple of gnostic teaching, at
|
||||
least 3000 years old, and he gets it fundamentally wrong.
|
||||
|
||||
The book certainly doesn't start on a good note. But how hard is it really to
|
||||
lie to a human brain? Imagine some human scientists wanted to pull this off,
|
||||
could they do it? Well, sure. Maybe not today, but easily in the near future.
|
||||
One great simplification they could employ, that Dennett never even mentions, is
|
||||
taking senses away. If you have never experienced something, then you won't miss
|
||||
it! If I take a fresh brain without memories and never provide it with visual
|
||||
feedback, then it won't develop vision and never miss it. The necessary
|
||||
complexity of the simulation has just gone down a lot. We know that blind people
|
||||
are just as consciousness as the rest of us and I don't think Dennett would dare
|
||||
argue against it, so why doesn't he address this? Nonetheless, there is a limit
|
||||
here, as demonstrated by Helen Keller. If you cut away too many senses, no
|
||||
consciousness will develop. But we don't need movement, we don't need vision and
|
||||
we don't need pain. Sound and speech, plus a few easy parts like smell, should
|
||||
be enough. We could also add touch as long as we limit movement. The human brain
|
||||
is also quite flexible and will adapt to new senses, like magnetism, as long as
|
||||
we can input it. Some body hackers have achieved neat things in that regard.
|
||||
Even better, you can do this even after the person has experienced a "real"
|
||||
world, as long as you modify their memories as well. There are plenty of
|
||||
documented cases of people losing parts of their brain and not noting it. Losing
|
||||
a whole direction, like "left", is not that unusual for a stroke victim. They
|
||||
don't notice at all that they don't see anything to their left, the very concept
|
||||
is gone. Ask them to get dressed and they only put on one sock. So if vision is
|
||||
too complex for you, just cut it all out. Once technology has improved, you can
|
||||
add it back in again. To lie convincingly, we really only need to be consistent.
|
||||
If movement and touch is only binary (I touch you or not; you push or not), then
|
||||
the brain will think of it as normal.
|
||||
|
||||
Furthermore, we already have brains in vats! There are already complete
|
||||
simulations of neurons. Some primitive animal brains (worms, mostly) have
|
||||
already been simulated! As of 2010, the best we can do are small parts of a
|
||||
rat's brain, but in less than 30 years, we will be able to do human brain's as
|
||||
well. So his claim of this being "beyond human technology now and probably
|
||||
forever" is utterly ridiculous.
|
||||
|
||||
Strong Hallucinations
|
||||
---------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Because brains in a vat are impossible in fact, we have a problem with strong
|
||||
hallucinations, he continues. He defines a strong hallucination as
|
||||
|
||||
> a hallucination of an apparently concrete and persisting three-dimensional
|
||||
> object in the real world - as contrasted by flashes, geometric distortions,
|
||||
> auras, afterimages, fleeting phantom-limb experiences, and other anomalous
|
||||
> sensations. A strong hallucination would be, say, a ghost that talked back,
|
||||
> that permitted you to touch it, that resisted with a sense of solidity, that
|
||||
> cast a shadow, that was visible from any angle so that you might walk around
|
||||
> it and see what its back looked like
|
||||
|
||||
My first reactions to this was: "I *had* such hallucinations! *Multiple
|
||||
times*!" But he concludes that they must be impossible, as the brain is clearly
|
||||
not powerful enough to create them. This puzzled me, to say the least. I can
|
||||
understand him here, but my own experience seems to contradict this. In fact,
|
||||
because my hallucinations were so convincing, I was often reluctant to call them
|
||||
hallucinations at all. They were the primary reason why I was a gnostic theist.
|
||||
If I talked to a god, saw it, touched it, had it transform the whole world and
|
||||
so on, how could I possibly have hallucinated that?
|
||||
|
||||
Before I address this, a little side note. I didn't notice it at first,
|
||||
especially when reading "Breaking the Spell" (a more sensible, but too careful
|
||||
book), but Dennett mentions Carlos Castaneda as an example of someone describing
|
||||
such strong hallucinations and how that fact "suggested to scientists that the
|
||||
book, in spite of having been a successful Ph.D. thesis in anthropology at UCLA,
|
||||
was fiction, not fact.". And then it dawned on me: Dennett is an **exoteric**
|
||||
thinker. Let me explain what I mean by this. The terms *esoteric* and
|
||||
*exoteric*, in this context, refer to where knowledge comes from: esoteric
|
||||
knowledge is derived from within oneself, while exoteric knowledge is drawn from
|
||||
the outside world. The perceived duality is false, but this is irrelevant. What
|
||||
I mean when I say that Dennett is exoteric is that he looks at consciousness as
|
||||
an outside phenomenon, something you approach like an anthropologist, taking
|
||||
notes of other people's behaviour and so on. This approach is utterly alien to
|
||||
me. I have always favored the esoteric approach, in which you think of
|
||||
consciousness (and related phenomena) as something that can only ever be
|
||||
addressed in your own mind. The insights of any other person are, ultimately,
|
||||
useless to you. This is similar to the difference between orthodox religions,
|
||||
that value history, authority and literalism (You can only learn about God from
|
||||
his Chosen.), and gnostic religions, that value personal revelations and
|
||||
experiences (You can only learn about God yourself.). The consequence of this
|
||||
difference is that Dennett seems to me so completely inexperienced about the
|
||||
topic of consciousness. As far as I can tell, he never took any drugs, never
|
||||
meditated, never learned any spiritual teaching or anything like this. How could
|
||||
anyone *not* do this? I would never trust a chemist that never tried to build a
|
||||
bomb, nor would I ever trust an engineer that didn't took apart a complex
|
||||
machine (like their microwave or car engine) for fun (and to see if they could
|
||||
put it back together again). Those would be the most natural first impulses for
|
||||
anyone remotely interested in the fields (and not just doing it for the profit),
|
||||
and they would be valuable first insights and opportunities to learn essential
|
||||
skills (like, "don't get burned" for all three fields I mentioned). For example,
|
||||
Susan Blackmore has extensive drug and meditation experiences, as has Sam Harris
|
||||
and almost everyone else I know that is interested in some aspect of their own
|
||||
mind. I find it really hard to imagine the mindset of a person that wants to
|
||||
understand minds, yet doesn't start hacking their own one right away. The term
|
||||
"ivory tower academic" never seemed more appropriate.
|
||||
|
||||
But back to the book itself. As I mentioned, I was still, at least partially,
|
||||
convinced I had experienced strong hallucinations before. So is Dennett's
|
||||
conclusion just bullshit? Well, no. He goes on to explain how they actually
|
||||
might come about, and provides a great analogy in the form of a party game
|
||||
called "Psychoanalysis":
|
||||
|
||||
> In this game one person, the dupe, is told that while he is out of the room,
|
||||
> one member of the assembled party will be called upon to relate a recent
|
||||
> dream. This will give everybody else in the room the story line of that dream
|
||||
> so that when the dupe returns to the room and begins questioning the assembled
|
||||
> party, the dreamer's identity will be hidden in the crowd of responders. The
|
||||
> dupe's job is to ask yes/no questions of the assembled group until he has
|
||||
> figured out the dream narrative to a suitable degree of detail, at which point
|
||||
> the dupe is to psychoanalyze the dreamer, and use the analysis to identify him
|
||||
> or her. Once the dupe is out of the room, the host explains to the rest of the
|
||||
> party that no one is to relate a dream, that the party is to answer the dupe's
|
||||
> questions according to the following simple rule: if the last letter of the
|
||||
> last word of the question is in the first half of the alphabet, the questions
|
||||
> is to be answered in the affirmative, and all other questions are to be
|
||||
> answered in the negative, with one proviso: a non-contradiction override rule
|
||||
> to the effect that later questions are not to be given answers that contradict
|
||||
> earlier answers. For example: Q: Is the dream about a girl? A: Yes. but if
|
||||
> later our forgetful dupe asks Q: Are there any female characters in it? A: Yes
|
||||
> [in spite of the final t, applying the noncontradiction override] When the
|
||||
> dupe returns to the room and begins questioning, he gets a more or less
|
||||
> random, or at any rate arbitrary, series of yeses and noes in response. The
|
||||
> results are often entertaining. Sometimes theprocess terminates swiftly in
|
||||
> absurdity, as one can see at a glance by supposing the initial question asked
|
||||
> were "Is the story line of the dream word-for-word identical to the story line
|
||||
> of War and Peace?" or, alternatively, "Are there any animate beings in it?" A
|
||||
> more usual outcome is for a bizarre and often obscene story of ludicrous
|
||||
> misadventure to unfold, to the amusement of all. When the dupe eventually
|
||||
> decides that the dreamer — whoever he or she is — must be a very sick and
|
||||
> troubled individual, the assembled party gleefully retorts that the dupe
|
||||
> himself is the author of the "dream."
|
||||
|
||||
This is, in a way, very close to how some parts of the human brain actually
|
||||
work. Most processing doesn't start with the facts and derives a hypothesis that
|
||||
it then tests (as science should work), but rather is overeager to find
|
||||
patterns. Instead, you get a face recognition system that is totally convinced
|
||||
that this is a face, no doubt about that! Oh, it was just some toast, oh well.
|
||||
But it totally look like a face! Like the Virgin Mary, even! You just need to
|
||||
slightly disorient this part, or feed it random noise, and it will see faces
|
||||
everywhere, in the walls, the trees, your hand, everything. Or nowhere, of
|
||||
course, depending on the exact disturbance. And I began to think, if you just
|
||||
disturb a few crucial areas involved in parsing important objects (like faces,
|
||||
intentions, geometric patterns and so on), and this isn't particularly hard, you
|
||||
really only need to cut off the regular input (as when sleeping), then the
|
||||
narrative parts of the brain are in quite a tricky situation. Their job is to
|
||||
make sense of all that, rationalizing both the outside world and your own
|
||||
behaviour. This is crucial in social situations; you really wanna figure out
|
||||
fast who is plotting against you and whom you can trust. In fact, it is so
|
||||
useful, that even quite a bit of false positives isn't so bad. Some paranoia or
|
||||
thinking your PC hates you isn't so bad and can even help you analyze situations
|
||||
(like thinking that "the fire wants to eat up all the oxygen"). Dennett calls
|
||||
this particular analysis the _intentional stance_. Now, if the narrator is only
|
||||
given (pseudo-)random noise, it will impose any story it thinks is most natural,
|
||||
i.e. most of the time other human(oid)s, recent emotions and so on. This is
|
||||
exactly how dreams work and, in fact, most drug-induced hallucinations as well.
|
||||
The exact distortion and resulting flexibility in making up a good story depends
|
||||
on the drug, of course, and is quite interesting in itself.
|
||||
|
||||
But does this really explain my own strong hallucinations? I was reluctant to
|
||||
accept this at first, but now have to agree with Dennett here. Thinking back,
|
||||
and based on the most recent experiments, I am forced to concede this point. I
|
||||
never met an agent, or phenomenon at all, that was able to act against my own
|
||||
will. James Kent describes this on [tripzine]:
|
||||
|
||||
> However, the more I experimented with DMT the more I found that the "elves"
|
||||
> were merely machinations of my own mind. While under the influence I found I
|
||||
> could think them into existence, and then think them right out of existence
|
||||
> simply by willing it so. Sometimes I could not produce elves, and my mind
|
||||
> would wander through all sorts of magnificent and amazing creations, but the
|
||||
> times that I did see elves I tried very hard to press them into giving up some
|
||||
> non-transient feature that would confirm at least a rudimentary "autonomous
|
||||
> existence" beyond my own imagination. Of course, I could not. Whenever I tried
|
||||
> to pull any information out of the entities regarding themselves, the data
|
||||
> that was given up was always relevant only to me. The elves could not give me
|
||||
> any piece of data I did not already know, nor could their existence be
|
||||
> sustained under any kind of prolonged scrutiny. Like a dream, once you realize
|
||||
> you are dreaming you are actually slipping into wakefulness and the dream
|
||||
> fades. So it is with the elves as well. When you try to shine a light of
|
||||
> reason on them they dissolve like shadows.
|
||||
|
||||
And so I gave up on believing in them, as reality, as Philip K. Dick said, "is
|
||||
that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". One last thought
|
||||
one the topic, though: Dennett contradicts himself here. If it is so relatively
|
||||
easy to lie to the brain, to convince it to see patterns that aren't there - and
|
||||
he even provides a mechanism: don't lie to the senses, lie to the interpreting
|
||||
part - how can he still dismiss the brain in the vat so easily? He has just
|
||||
described, in detail, how you would go about setting up a relatively easy
|
||||
simulation! It will become clear later that Dennett has thought of this, but at
|
||||
first, his argument is very inconsistent and sloppy.
|
||||
|
||||
Imagine
|
||||
=======
|
||||
|
||||
Dennett begins chapter 2 with a little justification, almost an apology. "If the
|
||||
concept of consciousness were to 'fall to science', what would happen to our
|
||||
sense of moral agency and free will?" Personally, I think the whole sentiment is
|
||||
silly, but then I've been in contact with non-dualistic ideas since I was a
|
||||
child, so I tend to underestimate the confusion an Abrahamic influence in
|
||||
upbringing can cause. I still wonder why people care so much about free will,
|
||||
but Dennett is right both in anticipating the response and in disarming it. Even
|
||||
experts in cognitive science often believe in dualistic concepts, like
|
||||
Descartes' mind vs. matter, or a more toned down version Dennett calls the
|
||||
"Cartesian theatre", i.e. the idea that somewhere in their brain there is a
|
||||
central place where consciousness happens, a seat of the "I", if you will. It is
|
||||
unfortunate that we still have to deal with this (even though it has been
|
||||
dismantled by Greek, Indian and many other thinkers for at least 2000 years),
|
||||
but the illusion is still powerful and has to be addressed.
|
||||
|
||||
I also want to add that Dennett's point here (and later on, when he goes into
|
||||
the details) is that there is no one central point _where consciousness
|
||||
happens_, not that the brain is entirely decentral. Recent research hints at the
|
||||
fact that visual processing may actually have a central HQ, but the important
|
||||
thing is that not _all_ final processing happens there. Some high level
|
||||
functionality may have a center here or there, but they are all separate and
|
||||
provide no basis for a _unity of consciousness_[^unity] as it is naively
|
||||
perceived.
|
||||
|
||||
But let's continue with more meaty stuff. Dennett outlines the following rules
|
||||
for his approach of explaining consciousness:
|
||||
|
||||
> (1) *No Wonder Tissue allowed.* I will try to explain every puzzling feature of
|
||||
> human consciousness within the framework of contemporary physical science; at
|
||||
> no point will I make an appeal to inexplicable or unknown forces, substances,
|
||||
> or organic powers. In other words, I intend to see what can be done within the
|
||||
> conservative limits of standard science, saving a call for a revolution in
|
||||
> materialism as a last resort.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> (2) *No feigning anesthesia.* It has been said of behaviorists that they feign
|
||||
> anesthesia — they pretend they don't have the experiences we know darn well
|
||||
> they share with us. If I wish to deny the existence of some controversial
|
||||
> feature of consciousness, the burden falls on me to show that it is somehow
|
||||
> illusory.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> (3) *No nitpicking about empirical details.* I will try to get all the
|
||||
> scientific facts right, insofar as they are known today, but there is abundant
|
||||
> controversy about just which exciting advances will stand the test of time. If
|
||||
> I were to restrict myself to "facts that have made it into the textbooks," I
|
||||
> would be unable to avail myself of some of the most eye-opening recent
|
||||
> discoveries (if that is what they are). And I would still end up unwittingly
|
||||
> purveying some falsehoods, if recent history is any guide. [...]
|
||||
|
||||
I find (2) particularly funny, given that I have criticized him for this very
|
||||
thing before. But then, he really might not have had these kind of experiences
|
||||
he dismisses so easily. In fact, there seems to be a tremendous difference
|
||||
between people how receptive their brain is to religious experiences. Actual
|
||||
experiences, like visions, profound meaning or higher (sometimes called _pure_)
|
||||
consciousness are rare (and independent of religions - they just provide a
|
||||
common framework). It is therefore not surprising that the vast majority of
|
||||
scientists and philosophers simply doesn't know what the few people that had
|
||||
those mystic experiences are talking about, leading to much rationalization and
|
||||
dismissal as "metaphors" or "confabulation". Luckily, this is slowly changing,
|
||||
and I do have the suspicion that Dennett himself is becoming more aware of this.
|
||||
Work on Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, for example, has demonstrated such experiences
|
||||
as real and very challenging to our normal constructions of reality. Our brain
|
||||
is far stranger and less organized than Dennett portraits it here.
|
||||
|
||||
The Garden of Arcane Delights
|
||||
-----------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Dennet then provides a "phenomenological garden", i.e. a wide catalogue of
|
||||
experiences that are considered as "part" of the mind, like vision, hunger or
|
||||
fear. In this garden, he emphasizes vision the most and among his examples, he
|
||||
demonstrates just this large variety among humans how and when mental images
|
||||
appear. Personally, I found several of his examples to be entirely non-visual,
|
||||
like:
|
||||
|
||||
> For instance, it's hard to imagine how anyone could get some jokes without the
|
||||
> help of mental imagery. Two friends are sitting in a bar drinking; one turns
|
||||
> to the other and says, "Bud, I think you've had enough — your face is getting
|
||||
> all blurry!" Now didn't you use an image or fleeting diagram of some sort to
|
||||
> picture the mistake the speaker was making?
|
||||
|
||||
I didn't. Humor, or stories in general, tend to be non-visual for
|
||||
me. They happen "as language", not "as vision", if that makes any
|
||||
sense. But for other experiences he doesn't emphasize the visual
|
||||
component and I wonder, doesn't he have one there? He talks a lot
|
||||
about music and tones, but never mentions seeing music, which I do,
|
||||
to a degree. Different tones *look* different to me, but they don't
|
||||
*sound* very different - and least not in any meaningful way.[^vis]
|
||||
|
||||
[^vis]: You can even hack your brain here and change what part of it handles
|
||||
what. You can shift, through practice (and not very much, really - a few weeks
|
||||
may be enough to get very cool results) or drugs, your thoughts from being _an
|
||||
inner voice_ to _pure text_ to _images_ and so on, and mix-and-match wildly. I
|
||||
wrote some about that in my experiment on [speed reading].
|
||||
|
||||
Now, this in itself is not a problem - different parts of the brain doing the
|
||||
parsing and so on, which (for a multitude of reasons) is very different among
|
||||
individuals. I just find it weird that Dennett seems to assume that, in general,
|
||||
we all work the same. Sure, there might be blind people that have fundamentally
|
||||
different experiences, or someone might "prefer" mental diagrams to faces, but
|
||||
if I "see" a person when I'm thinking of them, you do too, right? Well, no. The
|
||||
differences can be profound, seemingly arbitrary and often go unnoticed for a
|
||||
long time, maybe even for life. Just compare what mathematical statements and
|
||||
explanations are "obvious and trivial" to some people and "confusing and
|
||||
impossible to understand" to others upon first hearing them. Or go into the
|
||||
Mythbusters forum and watch multiple people arguing that, of course!, X is true
|
||||
or false, it's so obvious!, but everyone with a different argument, often all
|
||||
contradicting each other. Personally, I don't even feel that it is justified to
|
||||
assume that there even is such a thing as an "experience" in any non-individual
|
||||
way. To say that there is such a thing as "a mental image of a face", in
|
||||
general, instead of saying "that what John Doe calls a mental image of a face",
|
||||
is very counter-intuitive and needs strong evidence to back it up. There
|
||||
probably is a unique brain pattern, a specific firing of neurons perhaps, that
|
||||
can be called a specific "experience", but those are unique to each brain. It
|
||||
might be true that there are common patterns among people, at least in some
|
||||
cases, but those have to be established - which Dennett simply doesn't do. The
|
||||
very idea, that like we mean the same animal when we say "dog" (with small
|
||||
caveats), we mean the same mental state when we say "think of a dog", is, to me,
|
||||
almost absurd. There is some functional equivalence going on, sure, otherwise
|
||||
communication would be impossible, but the exact implementations vary so much
|
||||
that such a catalogue is doomed from the start.
|
||||
|
||||
There is a common advice among users of strong hallucinogenic drugs: If you feel
|
||||
something discomforting and can't figure out what it is - like you never had
|
||||
this experience before? Almost certainly, you just have to pee. "When in doubt,
|
||||
go to the toilet." has so far never let me down, even though the same thing has
|
||||
felt very different every time.
|
||||
|
||||
Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit
|
||||
==============================
|
||||
|
||||
> I thought people were still going to throw the book across the room, but I
|
||||
> didn't want to give them an excuse to throw the book across the room. I wanted
|
||||
> them to feel a little bit bad about their throwing it across the room, maybe
|
||||
> go and retrieve it and think well, hang on, yes, this irritated me but maybe I
|
||||
> don't have the right to be irritated.
|
||||
> -Daniel Dennett, about [Breaking the Spell]
|
||||
|
||||
Although Dennett meant a different book, he still pretty much sums up how I feel
|
||||
"Consciousness Explained". If I weren't reading PDFs and library books, I
|
||||
literally would have thrown them against the wall. Multiple times, in fact.
|
||||
|
||||
But the more I came to think about it and analyzed *why* I disagreed so much
|
||||
with him, the more I realized that I really had very poor reasons to do so. No
|
||||
matter how weak I thought his arguments were, I couldn't just reject them
|
||||
without good arguments of my own, and I found out I didn't have any!
|
||||
|
||||
I spent a good 4 months or so reading through lots of literature, trying to
|
||||
develop a better understanding of the topic. Some of my earlier criticism I now
|
||||
even reject. No matter how much of his work I might find myself agreeing with
|
||||
in the future, I already am glad I stuck with the book. Dennett raised all hell
|
||||
in my brain and demonstrated to me quite clearly that I have been in heavy
|
||||
rationalization mode for some time now. I will have to deconstruct and tear
|
||||
apart a lot more until I reach internal consistency again, so let's go on!
|
||||
|
||||
Multiple Drafts and Central Meaning
|
||||
-----------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
I'm not going to discuss Dennett's core hypothesis[^md] directly much, simply
|
||||
because I don't see a useful way to *do* it. He successfully demonstrates a
|
||||
basic model how one might explain the mind without postulation a central
|
||||
organization, but the problem is that Dennett lacks so much precision in his
|
||||
ideas that they are barely testable or useful, really. They are more of a first
|
||||
justification to further pursuit the direction; a demonstration that there may
|
||||
be something good to be found here. But in itself, it is rather empty.
|
||||
|
||||
One thing of note I find astonishing is the fact that Dennett presents the idea
|
||||
as something radically new, something that needs strong justifications to be
|
||||
even considered worth thinking about in the broadest of terms. The more I read
|
||||
Western philosophy, and going by the reactions and statements of many
|
||||
scientists, Dennett's attitude seems to be right; there really *is* widespread
|
||||
skepticism and prejudice against this line of reasoning. Many people seem to
|
||||
really *believe* there is one core self from which all meaning clearly descends,
|
||||
following dedicated pathways, maybe even a strictly logical design like in a
|
||||
Turing machine.
|
||||
|
||||
*How can that be?!* It completely surprises me. Such ideas go clearly against my
|
||||
own experiences, clash with all of my introspections, have been widely and
|
||||
thoroughly taking apart in all the traditions about consciousness *I* seem to
|
||||
be aware of, like from Buddhism, Christian and Gnostic mysticism, the whole drug
|
||||
culture and so on. Really, most of the time the first things a mystic is gonna
|
||||
tell you is that reality is not fundamental, but can be taken apart, that your
|
||||
perceptions, emotions and thoughts are independent processes and not *you* and
|
||||
that most common sense of self, the ego, can entirely disappear[^ego]. In fact,
|
||||
the belief in the self is the very first thing on the way to nirvana a Buddhist
|
||||
has to overcome. It can take many forms, but the basic experience of selfless
|
||||
existence is one thing really *every* mystic or guru or saint has ever said or
|
||||
written something about that I just thought it to be common knowledge. How could
|
||||
you *not* know this? Did you also not know that the sun rises in the east?
|
||||
|
||||
But then, really, it shouldn't have surprised me. This mainstream ignorance was
|
||||
exactly what drove me away from many scientists (but not science) and
|
||||
intellectuals. Many times did I experience how a group of generally smart people
|
||||
would read a text about or by someone who had a mystic experience, and it
|
||||
doesn't matter whether the mystic content is just incidental or the only point,
|
||||
and they would completely *miss it*. I didn't even believe this for years
|
||||
because it is so obvious to me. They may read the Gospel of John, or talk about
|
||||
the ideas of St. Augustine, or discuss the purpose of monasteries, and they
|
||||
either never bring up the mystic content or dismiss it as poetic language. How
|
||||
someone can read the Gospel of John as a *political* text is beyond me. I would
|
||||
just listen, confused, how they'd discuss some of Jesus' teaching, say about the
|
||||
kingdom of god for example, and bring forth all kinds of interpretations; that it
|
||||
is a political vision (maybe a new state for the oppressed people, or an early
|
||||
form of communism), or that it is cult rhetoric, or a moral teaching, or a
|
||||
literary metaphor to drive home a certain point in his parables, and so on, all
|
||||
taking seriously at least as *possible* interpretations which would now have to
|
||||
be justified or criticised. It never seemed to occur to them at all that Jesus
|
||||
*meant exactly what he said*, that he was really speaking of the kingdom of god,
|
||||
something he had experienced himself and was now reporting on, not something he
|
||||
had invented in any way or wanted to establish, even though he warns multiple
|
||||
times explicitly that "though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do
|
||||
not hear or understand". He, and I, took the experience of these things as a
|
||||
given. *Of course* they exist, I had seen the kingdom, that's what got me
|
||||
interested in learning more about it in the first place. Surely you all have,
|
||||
too? Wait, no? You are puzzled what he could have possible meant? What?!
|
||||
|
||||
Dennett harshly reminds me of this myopia, most profoundly demonstrated by
|
||||
philosophers. They have never even seen the terrain, yet they try to draw a map
|
||||
anyway. No wonder Dennett has to take apart so many ideas I didn't even consider
|
||||
worth mentioning. I now feel sympathy for Dennett.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[^ego]: This is often called "ego death" in hallucinogen culture, but also being
|
||||
"born again" in Christian tradition and many other things. It is in my
|
||||
opinion the defining experience behind all mysticism and the first and most
|
||||
important requirement for any spiritual progress. The best indicator is
|
||||
probably the utter lack of a fear of death. It is basically the defining
|
||||
characteristic that mystics seem to be entirely without worry about death,
|
||||
or much worry in general.
|
||||
|
||||
[^md]: Dennett has written good another explanation of the multiple drafts model
|
||||
for [Scholarpedia] including some updates and corrections. I'm not going to
|
||||
reiterate it here.
|
||||
|
||||
[Scholarpedia]: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Multiple_drafts_model
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[^unity]: Later on, Dennett writes, "To begin with, there is our personal,
|
||||
introspective appreciation of the 'unity of consciousness', which impresses
|
||||
on us the distinction between 'in here' and 'out there.'" To quote Robert
|
||||
Anton Wilson's great "Prometheus Rising", "What I see with my eyes closed
|
||||
and with my eyes open is the same stuff: brain circuitry.". This is shortly
|
||||
followed up with this exercise for the reader: "If all you know is your own
|
||||
brain programs operating, the whole universe you experience is inside your
|
||||
head. Try to hold onto that model for at least an hour. Note how often you
|
||||
relapse into feeling the universe as *outside* you."
|
||||
|
||||
[^det]: As a little side note, he did the same thing when arguing that "free
|
||||
will" still exists in a deterministic world. Our world is not deterministic
|
||||
(it is, at best, probabilistic) and his re-definition of free will to
|
||||
something useful in practice because he doesn't want to face reality is very
|
||||
weak.
|
||||
|
||||
That's like arguing that, while impossible in principle, I can still measure
|
||||
the momentum of an atom with enough accuracy I would ever need in practice,
|
||||
therefore I can ignore all the implications of quantum physics. A weak
|
||||
excuse to save his own world view instead of facing the weirdness of
|
||||
reality. Also, [Aaron Swartz](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dennettdumb)
|
||||
has a nice and simple comment on that.
|
||||
|
||||
Dennett even goes on to state that in a deterministic world, some events may
|
||||
actually be _uncaused_, i.e. you can not find a specific cause for them. He
|
||||
gives the following example:
|
||||
|
||||
> Consider the sentence "The devaluation of the rupiah caused the Dow Jones
|
||||
> average to fall." We rightly treat such a declaration with suspicion; are
|
||||
> we really so sure that among nearby universes the Dow Jones fell _only_ in
|
||||
> those where the rupiah fell first? Do we even imagine that every universe
|
||||
> where the rupiah fell experienced a stock market sell-off? Might it not
|
||||
> have been a confluence of dozens of factors that jointly sufficed to send
|
||||
> the market tumbling but none of which by itself was essential? On some
|
||||
> days, perhaps, Wall Street's behavior has a ready explanation; yet at
|
||||
> least as often we suspect that no particular cause is at work.
|
||||
|
||||
He also mentions World War 1 as a good example, and the following snippet:
|
||||
|
||||
> The bias in favor of not just looking but finding a cause is not idle, as
|
||||
> Matt Ridley notes in his discussion of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, for
|
||||
> which no cause has yet been found: "This offends our natural determinism,
|
||||
> in which diseases must have causes. Perhaps CJD just happens spontaneously
|
||||
> at the rate of about one case per million per year".
|
||||
|
||||
I am reminded of Lem's Śledztwo (engl.: The Investigation), where exactly
|
||||
this happens: Mysteriously, several corpses seem to stand up and walk a bit
|
||||
until they finally collapse again. At first, it is thought that someone
|
||||
breaks into the morgue and arranges the corpses, but later on, a
|
||||
statistician comes up with an elaborate numerical theory that perfectly
|
||||
models all cases (and predicts further cases), but offers no explanation
|
||||
whatsoever, except that this kind of phenomenon just happens, according to
|
||||
certain rules.
|
||||
|
||||
Dennett commits a (rather brutal) category error here. He confuses
|
||||
deterministic causes and narrative causes. He insists on defending that we
|
||||
are narratively free - we guss what possible world we are in and can choose
|
||||
our actions accordingly. But that is not what causal determinism is *about*.
|
||||
|
||||
[tripzine]: http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?smlid=268
|
||||
[Breaking the Spell]: http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1001
|
||||
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|
|
@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
|||
% Reflections
|
||||
|
||||
Reflections
|
||||
===========
|
||||
|
||||
The unobserved life is not worth living.
|
||||
|
||||
- thoughts on Daniel Dennett's book [Consciousness Explained]
|
||||
- [Letting Go of Music]
|
||||
- my review of [Find the Bug]
|
||||
- a bit about [Nicknames]
|
||||
- a meditation on [Xmonad]
|
||||
- [Why I love my SRS], or, How to hack your long-term memory
|
||||
|
||||
[Letting Go of Music]: /reflections/letting_go_of_music.html
|
||||
[Find the Bug]: /reflections/find_the_bug.html
|
||||
[Consciousness Explained]: /reflections/con_exp.html
|
||||
[Why I love my SRS]: /reflections/srs.html
|
||||
[Xmonad]: /reflections/xmonad.html
|
||||
[Nicknames]: /reflections/nicknames.html
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,416 @@
|
|||
% Letting Go of Music
|
||||
|
||||
Motivation
|
||||
==========
|
||||
|
||||
It feels very unusual and strange, after thinking critically about the
|
||||
arguments, assessing the evidence and forming a rational conclusion, to arrive
|
||||
at a position that nowadays only two groups share: Christian puritans and the
|
||||
Taliban. It makes me very uncomfortable, but I let's give the argument a good
|
||||
shot anyway.
|
||||
|
||||
What conclusion am I talking about? *Music is a parasite*, or in practical
|
||||
terms, *Music exploits you*. This is a radical statement, so initial skepticism
|
||||
is very much understandable. If it comforts you, let me get one thing out of the
|
||||
way: I do not object to music out of "spiritual" or "religious" reasons, which,
|
||||
unfortunately, seems to be the most common case. Most likely, music does not
|
||||
"corrupt your character" or "lead you away from God" or any such nonsense. It is
|
||||
also not really an argument for asceticism. No, my main argument comes from
|
||||
memetic theory and a cost/benefit analysis. It is, in principle, a very similar
|
||||
argument broad forward by atheists against religion. The Four Horsemen of
|
||||
Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens,
|
||||
all truly awesome) have argued very much alike, but against religion. I will
|
||||
try to show that their reasoning extends to more fields, one of which is music.
|
||||
This is not meant to falsify or parody their position (I in fact agree with it,
|
||||
at least partially), but to explore the real ramifications.
|
||||
|
||||
Being sensible never got anyone anywhere. I don't believe much in carefully
|
||||
adjusting. Jumping right into a big unknown and then compromising always seemed
|
||||
so much more natural to me. If things work out, you are a genius for getting it
|
||||
right from the start. If they don't, you can always just deny everything.
|
||||
|
||||
Before I get going, let's clarify 3 things. Firstly, I will build on memetic
|
||||
theory, so you will probably need to know what it's about to understand some of
|
||||
my reasoning. You may want to read "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore or some
|
||||
of Daniel Dennett's recent books, like "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", or at least
|
||||
google it. The arguments aren't really very technical, but if you aren't
|
||||
familiar with basic evolution or what a meme is, then my points may seem alien
|
||||
to you. To understand the perspective of replicators, it will also help greatly
|
||||
to read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.
|
||||
|
||||
Secondly, let's establish a few terms. I will refer to "not having music" as
|
||||
amusicality, analog to "not believing in god(s)" being atheism. This is totally
|
||||
different from being tone-deaf, disliking music or the like. To be honest, I'm a
|
||||
great fan of music, so this is also not a "disgruntled outsider" kind of
|
||||
argument. Furthermore, I take it as a given that music is a highly advanced
|
||||
memeplex (i.e. group of memes that support each other), in the same way as
|
||||
religion or language, and as such is a replicator and subject to evolution, but
|
||||
independent of genes.
|
||||
|
||||
And lastly, why I will bring no argument for amusicality. It might seem odd that
|
||||
I only attack arguments for music, but have no strong argument of my own why
|
||||
"not having music" is too be favored. This follows the same logic of atheism:
|
||||
the one's making the claim are the one's in need of evidence and arguments. The
|
||||
Null Hypothesis (i.e. "there is no correlation between A and B" or "A doesn't
|
||||
exist" or similar) is the default position of science. We start off with an
|
||||
empty set of assumptions and every one we want to add has to be substantiated.
|
||||
To successfully defend the skeptic position, I only have to dismantle all the
|
||||
evidence proponents show, not actively prove the impossibility of the claim.
|
||||
Atheists are used to it in terms of religion: You only show there is no reason
|
||||
to believe in god(s), you don't need to show there is any evidence against
|
||||
god(s). This is logically evident, as disproving such claims is often impossible
|
||||
or simply impractical.
|
||||
|
||||
However, my position isn't exactly that bleak. I actually *can*> make one simple
|
||||
argument for "not having music": it eats up your time. Replace any time you
|
||||
spend listening to music with something actually beneficial and you are in a
|
||||
better position. But even if music were "free" (as in, would use up no
|
||||
resources), my position might still be the rational one.
|
||||
|
||||
To be honest, the argument against music isn't entirely unmotivated. (It never
|
||||
is.) I became so udderly obsessed with music that I just got sick of it all.
|
||||
Comparing codecs, hardware, different players, optimizations, genres, recording
|
||||
techniques, musical structure, correct labeling and all this crap, I just got
|
||||
tired of it; and when I asked myself why I was doing all this in the first
|
||||
place, what music gave me in return... I got nothing. Nothing worth the effort,
|
||||
anyway. So it's probably fair to say that I wasn't exactly unbiased.
|
||||
|
||||
So let's go and see all the arguments in favor of music. To be clear, it is rare
|
||||
for anyone to defend *all* of them. But they are, as far as I know, all
|
||||
proposed seriously and the list is complete. Here we go:
|
||||
|
||||
The Argument from History
|
||||
-------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Humans have been playing music for, at least, thousands of years and
|
||||
> probably millions of years. It is completely natural for us to do so. Evolution
|
||||
> has shaped our brain to encourage this.
|
||||
|
||||
This is true, but a fallacy: what *is* can never inform us what *ought* to be.
|
||||
Evolution has also made men good at killing and raping, for example. (And also
|
||||
enabled us to use language and science, of course.) What has happened in the
|
||||
past can inform us, but can not be our sole guide. You must provide actual,
|
||||
current benefits.
|
||||
|
||||
The Argument from Social Integrity
|
||||
----------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Human society is, among other things, united by music. People engage in
|
||||
> collective music, like festivals, camp fires or choirs. They define their own
|
||||
> identity through it ("Are you a metalhead, too?"). It is one reason why human
|
||||
> society is so stable and productive. Do you want to advocate chaos and
|
||||
> anarchy?
|
||||
|
||||
This is probably the strongest general argument in favor of music. It is true
|
||||
that music is a very important social "glue" and it might very well be true that
|
||||
society as we know it would not function without it. But the same thing can be
|
||||
said of religion. There is not a single historical case of a society that got
|
||||
from family-sized tribes to city-states without major help from religion. That,
|
||||
however, doesn't make any religion particularly true. And even if this were true
|
||||
in the past, it doesn't have to be true for the future.
|
||||
|
||||
I'll have to admit that I can not completely disprove this argument. I would not
|
||||
advice on any changes to society, like outlawing music, even though I'd love to
|
||||
do a proper experiment. But I can point some things out.
|
||||
|
||||
First, there *are* societies without music. The most famous one are the Taliban,
|
||||
who are thriving and have a stable history. They certainly are a competitive and
|
||||
strong society. Also, the deaf community is active and very tight-knit. The
|
||||
claim is probably overstated, but might have some justification.
|
||||
|
||||
Second, I do understand the danger of trying to experiment on this. What if the
|
||||
argument is right and we accidentally do harm civilization? Is it really worth
|
||||
the risk? (I'd like to think so, but I'm also willing to put up with a far
|
||||
greater risk than most people.)
|
||||
|
||||
The Argument from Pleasure
|
||||
--------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Humans take great joy from music. It invokes many emotions, from happiness to
|
||||
> anger to sadness. It gives their life meaning, but also just passes boredom.
|
||||
|
||||
This one is easy to argue against, but hard to understand. You do not enjoy
|
||||
music because of benefits, but because music is shaped (and has shaped you) to
|
||||
be enjoyable. It (ab)uses your reward system, your fear response, anger response
|
||||
and so on, to pass itself on. It is self-perpetuating, making you feel good so
|
||||
you listen to it so you feel good so you listen to it... Memetic evolution
|
||||
predicts this: brains that are "bored" without music will propagate it more, so
|
||||
any successful music will incorporate selection for this property. This is
|
||||
obvious to any outsider, as it is with any drug, but not for the afflicted.
|
||||
Observe anyone under the effect of a drug, during a panic attack and so on,
|
||||
while you yourself are neutral, unaffected. They will be blind to it; their
|
||||
brain pays no attention to this fact.
|
||||
|
||||
Arguing that pleasure in itself is a good thing, is tautological at best and
|
||||
addictive behaviour at worst. If you propose this, then you are in a really bad
|
||||
position. It is very hard to make a good case for pleasure without also argueing
|
||||
for direct stimulation of your reward center. You see, Electrodes can be
|
||||
inserted, a little switch can be attached and you can sit there all day, feeling
|
||||
great! But even most hedonists do not want to defend this.
|
||||
|
||||
The Argument from Morals
|
||||
------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Music can influence our moral behaviour. Playing wholesome and delightful
|
||||
> music to children will shape their character for the better!
|
||||
|
||||
This is a bold statement, especially because it has no evidence whatsoever.
|
||||
There is no psychological study supporting this, no disproportionately large
|
||||
chunk of deaf people in jail, no connection between crime rate and music
|
||||
education. If there is any link, it is minuscule.
|
||||
|
||||
There is, however, a strong connection between indoctrination and music. Almost
|
||||
every cult, religion or otherwise strong ideology will use music for its
|
||||
purposes. Music's strong potential to move people's emotion can easily be
|
||||
exploited to instill fake unity, bliss or aggression. I would not go so far to
|
||||
disqualify music for this reason, but reject any moral claims as at least
|
||||
neutral. If it has positive effects, it might as well have negative ones. You
|
||||
can not advocate only the one part you profit from.
|
||||
|
||||
This argument is sometimes used negatively, e.g. "Modern music corrupts our
|
||||
children!". If you believe it, you must accept this conclusion as well. Music
|
||||
censorship, at least partially, would be the only responsible thing to do.
|
||||
|
||||
The Argument from Profits
|
||||
-------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Billions of dollars are involved. Music is a very profitable
|
||||
> industry.
|
||||
|
||||
So is heroin. I don't feel I have to say more about this; it is such an empty
|
||||
argument.
|
||||
|
||||
The Argument from Benign Symbiosis
|
||||
----------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Music is useful to us. It enhances our ability to recognize patterns. It
|
||||
> supports the learning of languages. It improves our ability to adopt other
|
||||
> memes. It has been documented that children that learnt an instrument perform
|
||||
> better in school. Music can help to treat mental illnesses.
|
||||
|
||||
There exists barely any valid research for any of those claims. The strongest is
|
||||
probably the learning of languages. Basically, this uses musics strong
|
||||
reproductive capabilities by hijacking it. You take language memes, like a poem,
|
||||
or just some words, and apply them as text to some music, thereby making them
|
||||
"stick" a lot better. This seems to work, as far as we can tell. There is, of
|
||||
course, no conclusive evidence. (This is mostly because of the failure of
|
||||
language education and linguistics, and unrelated to music, in my opnion.)
|
||||
|
||||
But is this worth its price? Are you able to contain it? Recall that you are
|
||||
using music exactly because it is so fertile. It seems like the opposite of a
|
||||
safe operation to me. Also, is it really effective? Instead of using music to
|
||||
get small benefits in school or elsewhere, read books. Learn critical thinking.
|
||||
Solve puzzles. Address the problem directly, instead of trying to do it through
|
||||
some remote synergy with a symbiont.
|
||||
|
||||
However, it can be argued that music was a major driving force behind the
|
||||
development of our big brains. We needed more and more capable meme machines to
|
||||
spread music more reliably, so we were selected for it. We profit from this
|
||||
because the human brain is largely a universal machine, not specialized for any
|
||||
particular meme and so all kinds of useful memes spread better as well. Everyone
|
||||
wants a better memetic "soil", if you want. But if this is true (I suspect it
|
||||
is), then there is a fiendish little twist to it: We can exploit the parasite
|
||||
now! Sure, music used us for its own purposes, endowing us with bigger brains to
|
||||
get a better chance itself, but now that we have those brains, we don't need to
|
||||
have any affiliation to music anymore! What do we care if music survives? Let's
|
||||
use those brains for something *good*! So long, and thanks for all the
|
||||
neurons!
|
||||
|
||||
The medical use of music might be justified. Psychotherapy is in a terrible
|
||||
state right now, but the existing studies seem to support effectiveness of music
|
||||
in some cases. While I personally would prefer other methods, I would
|
||||
nonetheless agree that a reasonable case can be made for music *in the hands
|
||||
of a professional*. And this is the crux: we are talking about serious
|
||||
illnesses and therapy, certainly not recreational use.
|
||||
|
||||
Finally, I feel that this argument is very dishonest. It is really a
|
||||
rationalisation. No one sits down, thinks "Hey, singing those songs would get me
|
||||
better test scores in 10 years!" and then does so. You listen to music because
|
||||
you like it. Later on come the "reasons" and "beliefs" on why it really is good
|
||||
for you. If I showed studies disproving all such claim, would it change the
|
||||
argument? Most likely not. You would still listen to music, those scientists be
|
||||
damned. They are probably frauds anyway!
|
||||
|
||||
Argument from Spirituality
|
||||
--------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> Entweder durch den Einfluss des narkotischen Getränkes, von dem alle
|
||||
> ursprünglichen Menschen und Völker in Hymnen sprechen, oder bei dem
|
||||
> gewaltigen, die ganze Natur lustvoll durchdringenden Nahen des Frühlings
|
||||
> erwachen jene dionysischen Regungen, in deren Steigerung das Subjektive zu
|
||||
> völliger Selbstvergessenheit hinschwindet. Auch im deutschen Mittelalter
|
||||
> wälzten sich unter der gleichen dionysischen Gewalt immer wachsende Schaaren,
|
||||
> singend und tanzend, von Ort zu Ort (...). Es gibt Menschen, die, aus Mangel
|
||||
> an Erfahrung oder aus Stumpfsinn, sich von solchen Erscheinungen wie von
|
||||
> "Volkskrankheiten", spöttisch oder bedauernd im Gefühl der eigenen Gesundheit
|
||||
> abwenden: die Armen ahnen freilich nicht, wie leichenfarbig und gespenstisch
|
||||
> eben diese ihre "Gesundheit" sich ausnimmt, wenn an ihnen das glühende Leben
|
||||
> dionysischer Schwärmer vorüberbraust.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Geburt der Tragödie [^trans]
|
||||
|
||||
[^trans]: Translation:
|
||||
|
||||
> Even under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which songs of all
|
||||
> primitive men and peoples speak, or with the potent coming of spring that
|
||||
> penetrates all nature with joy, these Dionysian emotions awake, and as
|
||||
> they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete
|
||||
> self-forgetfulness. In the German Middle Ages, too, singing and dancing
|
||||
> crowds, ever increasing in number, whirled themselves from place to place
|
||||
> under this same Dionysian impulse. (...) There are some who, from
|
||||
> obtuseness or lack of experience, turn away from such phenomena as from
|
||||
> "folk-diseases," with contempt or pity born of consciousness of their own
|
||||
> "healthy-mindedness." But of course such poor wretches have no idea how
|
||||
> corpselike and ghostly their so-called "healthy-mindedness" looks when the
|
||||
> glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them.
|
||||
|
||||
This is in my opinion the strongest and at the same time rarest argument. It
|
||||
surprised me a bit that so many people seem to listen to music for any *other*
|
||||
reason than this.[^after] But then, mystics have always been in the minority, so
|
||||
there.
|
||||
|
||||
The use of music for spiritual purposes extends to virtually all mystic
|
||||
practices, be they shamanistic rituals, prayer, meditation or the more modern
|
||||
drug-based practices, as exemplified by Leary or Crowley.
|
||||
|
||||
[^after]: This is a bit after-the-fact rationalisation, though. Like most
|
||||
people, I started listening to music not voluntarily, but was exposed to it and
|
||||
simply liked it. Only much later did I discover its great potential and changed
|
||||
my usage.
|
||||
|
||||
In fact, I suspect there is a strong correlation with "being spiritual" and
|
||||
"liking music". The link may be the ease with which memes can enter your brain -
|
||||
your memetic immune system, if you want. This holds true for me (I was a gnostic
|
||||
theist for a long time, having personally talked to several gods and all. It was
|
||||
a hard struggle towards logic and reason for me.) and many people I know.
|
||||
|
||||
Also, there is a strong connection to the amygdala and temporal lobes. I don't
|
||||
want to reiterate the point here and will just point to the awesome talks on
|
||||
neurotheology by Todd Murphy, specifically [Using Neuroscience for Spiritual
|
||||
Practice] and [Enlightenment, Self and the Brain]. There is some great research
|
||||
popping up in recent years for sure.
|
||||
|
||||
[Using Neuroscience for Spiritual Practice]:
|
||||
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1030598948823323439
|
||||
[Enlightenment, Self and the Brain]:
|
||||
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5474604744218568426
|
||||
|
||||
Honestly, I don't know how to retain my contrarian attitude here, seeing that I
|
||||
agree with the argument. You may try to attack spirituality (in the sense of
|
||||
mystic experiences, not believe in woo) as bad in itself, but this is very rare
|
||||
even among hardcore atheists and materialists.
|
||||
|
||||
The argument that mystic experiences will lead to pseudoscience or superstitions
|
||||
is easily disproved; just have a look at how many both scientists mystics are
|
||||
still clearly rational. Good examples may range from Michael Persinger on the
|
||||
science side, to Sam Harris somewhere in the middle, and the Dalai Lama on the
|
||||
religious side. Sure, like any counter-intuitive and large open question,
|
||||
spirituality lends itself to false believes, but that's a general human problem,
|
||||
not something specific to the topic. The answer are good rational practices, not
|
||||
abandoning music.
|
||||
|
||||
Conclusion
|
||||
==========
|
||||
|
||||
In the end, one thing stands out: many attitudes towards music, and their
|
||||
rationalisation, are indistinguishable from memetic addiction. People are being
|
||||
exploited by music. It has shaped our brain for its reproductive advantages.
|
||||
Sure, we may have won some sexual selection yourself, but this is of little
|
||||
concern to music. The memeplex has all characteristics of a virus. It eats up as
|
||||
much of individual resources as it can without disabling its host. We are
|
||||
constantly encouraged to listen to more music, get more music, recommend it to
|
||||
our friends and so on. It spreads for the sake of spreading. Good music is
|
||||
judged not by its inherent benefits to individuals or the species, but by how
|
||||
popular it is, that is, how good it is at spreading. Being an ear worm is a
|
||||
*good* thing for music to be. If someone states they doesn't listen much to
|
||||
music, then the most common response is one of disbelief, utterances of "How
|
||||
empty and meaningless my life would be without music!", of "What is wrong with
|
||||
you? Are you depressed?", followed by hundreds of recommendations because "There
|
||||
has to be some music out there that you like! Just listen more to it!".
|
||||
|
||||
It sure looks like the behaviour of addicts. If you are not devoted to music, at
|
||||
least a bit, you must try harder! These are memes that ruthlessly exploit their
|
||||
hosts. Natural selection has shaped them to be highly resistant, persuasive and
|
||||
addictive. All of music theory and education is only occupied with how to make
|
||||
more popular music, how to spread it better, how it increase its impact. It
|
||||
conveys no message (or only an empty shell of one), it teaches nothing, it gives
|
||||
you nothing except pleasure. It circumvents the purpose of a reward system by
|
||||
directly stimulating it without giving something in return. It is a parasite.
|
||||
|
||||
But what now?
|
||||
> I thought, "Okay, calm down. Let's just try on the not-believing-in-God
|
||||
> glasses for a moment, just for a second. Just put on the no-God glasses and
|
||||
> take a quick look around and then immediately throw them off". So I put them
|
||||
> on and I looked around.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> I'm embarrassed to report that I initially felt dizzy. I actually had the
|
||||
> thought, "Well, how does the Earth stay up in the sky? You mean we're just
|
||||
> hurtling through space? That's so vulnerable!" I wanted to run out and catch
|
||||
> the Earth as it fell out of space into my hands...
|
||||
>
|
||||
> I wandered around in a daze thinking, “No one is minding the store!” And I
|
||||
> wondered how traffic worked, like how we weren't just in chaos all the time.
|
||||
> And slowly, I began to see the world completely differently. I had to rethink
|
||||
> what I thought about everything. It's like I had to go change the wallpaper of
|
||||
> my mind.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> -- Julia Sweeney, "Letting Go of God (which my title is, of course, an allusion
|
||||
> to)
|
||||
|
||||
That's a bit how I felt at first. Really, can my reasoning be right? It *must*
|
||||
be wrong! Dvořák's 9th symphony, a parasite? ゆらゆら帝国's "Sweet Spot",
|
||||
detrimental? Demons & Wizards, really a satanic band? Impossible! And even if,
|
||||
can I ever be able to let go of them? Can I *not* listen to music? Will I not
|
||||
die of boredom, depression, isolation? Will it not cheapen my life to be
|
||||
amusical? Will nostalgia not overpower me?
|
||||
|
||||
It began to settle in. I remember the same thing happening to religion. Not
|
||||
praying, not talking with the gods, not feeling this sense of mystical bliss,
|
||||
this was really hard for me to accept. But it seemed the only honest thing to
|
||||
do. The only true understanding you can have. And after a while, the old way
|
||||
seemed silly. You begin to truly understand the world a bit better, not making
|
||||
excuses, running down dead ends, but learning an actual powerful lesson. Trying
|
||||
to understand or work with anything without embracing rationality and science is
|
||||
always a bad idea.
|
||||
|
||||
Safer Use
|
||||
---------
|
||||
|
||||
But there is something important to clarify here: Just because something is a
|
||||
parasite doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. In fact, most parasites are actually
|
||||
quite useful to their host. They share a common interest in the hosts well-being,
|
||||
after all. The crucial thing to understand, though, is that the virus is
|
||||
interested in its own replication the most. The host will always have to fight
|
||||
hard to ensure that the relationship is still symbiotic and not exploitative.
|
||||
|
||||
Basically, the normal safer use rules apply. Don't overdo it. Establish pauses,
|
||||
don't repeat anything too much, diversify your tastes. Avoid mainstream sources,
|
||||
which are mostly characterized by pure popularity. (And ruled by agents that
|
||||
have the moral strength of tobacco companies.) Don't mix activities too much:
|
||||
doing something "on the side", all the time, is always strong evidence that it
|
||||
has become an addiction. You know the drill - make sure you still benefit
|
||||
enough to make it worth it.
|
||||
|
||||
The Future
|
||||
----------
|
||||
|
||||
New habits will grow to fill the void, better habits. New memes will come. The
|
||||
world goes on.
|
||||
|
||||
But then I found this on Youtube: [Berryz工房 - Dschinghis Khan]
|
||||
|
||||
Yes, it's a Japanese cover of the German song *Dschingis Khan*. I don't
|
||||
know whether they are playing it in heaven or hell, but probably both. So good,
|
||||
yet so bad... If you ever needed proof that humanity has gone batshit insane,
|
||||
well... JPOP's the end of all theology, the end of all faith. You may believe
|
||||
whatever you want why there are no gods around today, but no one, religious and
|
||||
atheist alike, ever proposed that they simply got too alienated with us. I mean,
|
||||
JPOP, for Cthulhu's sake! You had all those great ideas for humanity, visions of
|
||||
paradise, or eternal servitude, or food, or whatever, but at some point, humans
|
||||
just stopped caring about the sacrifices and the prayers and just went on
|
||||
covering 70's pop. There's no chance of redemption anymore and from that day on,
|
||||
the gods simply didn't believe in us anymore. Nyarlathotep might have given us
|
||||
the atomic bomb, but even he is freaked out by *Hello! Project*. The mad,
|
||||
monotonous music surrounding Azathoth's throne, I might have identified it.
|
||||
|
||||
[Berryz工房 - Dschinghis Khan]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7pui9Q6Vbo
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1 @@
|
|||
title: Reflections
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
|||
% Nicknames
|
||||
|
||||
I finally got around to thinking up a Japanese nick. I've been playing Japanese
|
||||
games for quite a while, but always stumbled when asked for a name. Like, I only
|
||||
have a Latin one, and it's impossible to translate? So was just using whatever
|
||||
first name I heard most recently, but now I got a bit fed up and picked one.
|
||||
|
||||
At first, I tried going for a translation, so I chose 牟麻（ぼうま, bouma). Yes,
|
||||
that's a 4-level pun. My Latin nick is "muflax", with no preferred
|
||||
pronunciation. It's the composition of "mu" (as in 無) and "flax", as in "3
|
||||
pounds of flax", the two most well-known koan answers. "3 tons of flax" is also
|
||||
a traditional Discordian answer to ~~silly~~ philosophical questions. A literal
|
||||
translation into Japanese would be 無麻 (むま, muma). Of course, むま is
|
||||
normally written as 夢魔, meaning nightmare. That's a weird association already,
|
||||
but a bit too negative for me. So I wrote the "mu" as 牟 instead, this being a)
|
||||
an exotic way to write "pupil (of an eye)", b) the sound a cow makes. As a cow
|
||||
fetishist, I have been using 牟 as in impromptu nick for some time already.
|
||||
Traditionally, 牟 is used to write "moo" if you are being pedantic in a silly
|
||||
way (everyone else just writes ムー or モー), or more commonly, to stand for the
|
||||
sound "mu" in ancient loan words, most of them Sanskrit. As such, it appears in
|
||||
釈迦牟尼, the Shakyamuni, i.e. the Buddha himself. But that's not obscure enough
|
||||
for me, so I used an unusual reading of 牟 - ぼう (bou), as used in 牟子, a
|
||||
special mask some dancer's wear, and the word itself being a variant of 帽子 (ぼ
|
||||
うし, boushi), a hat or cap. I like the fact that this makes it look like a very
|
||||
poorly hidden elephant in the room. Everyone is gonna read it as "muma" and
|
||||
think of "nightmare", but you can't acknowledge that! Finally, bouma is a
|
||||
little-known term for the shape of a whole word, named after vision-researcher
|
||||
H. Bouma. That is, when reading, no one "sees" the individual letters, but picks
|
||||
up the shape of the word as a whole - the bouma[^bouma]. I didn't know there was
|
||||
a word for that, but will gladly assimilate it.
|
||||
|
||||
[^bouma]: Actually, that's bullshit. You _do_ read every letter, but still, the
|
||||
idea is widespread and it's nice that there is a word for it.
|
||||
|
||||
Anyway, shaggy dog and all, I didn't like the sound "bouma" all that much and
|
||||
just went for "つづく" (続く, tsudsuku, more like zuzuku), meaning "to
|
||||
continue", as prominently featured at the end of many TV show episodes. I love
|
||||
t- and k-sounds, so for me, つづく is one of the coolest words ever. Even
|
||||
cooler, though, is an dialectial pronunciation, "tuduku". You can listen to it
|
||||
on [this awesome site]
|
||||
(http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/ikonishi/narada/narada_tu&du.html) (the
|
||||
second sound from the top). I already tend to us this dialect myself,
|
||||
simply because it sounds so awesome. But unfortunately, almost all Japanese
|
||||
media uses the same Tokyo dialect (and sometimes a bastardized Kansai dialect),
|
||||
so I rarely get exposed to it. This has it's good sides, though, as my own
|
||||
pronunciation tends to be rather stable (and not like English, which I, like,
|
||||
spoke, like, a valley girl? For, like, months? Because of Buffy?).
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
|
|||
% SRS - So you can be a cyborg, too!
|
||||
|
||||
Why I love my SRS
|
||||
=================
|
||||
|
||||
Say, you want to learn something. Something big, like, Japanese or Chinese.
|
||||
Japanese uses 4 different writing system, but the one that stands out are the 漢
|
||||
字, i.e. the thousands of funny symbols. To be literate in Japanese, you need to
|
||||
now about 3000 of those. How would you learn something that huge?
|
||||
|
||||
Memory
|
||||
------
|
||||
|
||||
To learn anything, you need three things. First, the information must be
|
||||
**sticky**. That means it must be represented in a form your brain can actually
|
||||
remember. What that means is: Ever tried remembering a long number? Like, 20
|
||||
digits long? Impossible, unless you break it down. But ever remembered the whole
|
||||
plot, including all scenes, of a great movie? Totally easy. Your brain can
|
||||
remember pictures and narratives (related things, both by time and cause)
|
||||
easily, but abstract information is very hard. So you need to transform the 漢字
|
||||
, or whatever your learning, into pictures and stories, aka mnemonics.
|
||||
Fortunately, they were designed with that in mind, [so that's very
|
||||
simple](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembering_the_Kanji).
|
||||
|
||||
Reviews
|
||||
-------
|
||||
|
||||
Second, you need to **review regularly**. Your memory is leaky and needs
|
||||
constant reinforcement. Fortunately, every time the memory is refreshed, it will
|
||||
stick around a lot longer - roughly 2-3 times as long if you review just on the
|
||||
brink of forgetting. If you know some math, you'll recognise this as an
|
||||
exponential progression. What does that mean? You only need to review about 7-8
|
||||
times and the memory will stay for decades! So, that's manageable.
|
||||
Unfortunately, the brain is a little faulty, so you will forget a few things
|
||||
anyway. The good thing is, though, that with very little effort, you can already
|
||||
reach a retention rate of 90-95%, so on average you only need around 10 reviews
|
||||
per fact to make sure you'll remember it for a very long time.
|
||||
|
||||
That sounds pretty nice already, but still, 3000 漢字? Isn't that a lot of work?
|
||||
No. That's 3000 facts, meaning about 30,000 reviews. A review takes 10 seconds,
|
||||
at most. On average, it will take only about 5, but let's assume 10. Worst case
|
||||
scenario, you know. In total, that's only about 3.5 days of work. If it were not
|
||||
spaced out so much, you could finish it *in a week*. Sweet!
|
||||
|
||||
Have a look at those graphs.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
That's your work over 10 months. The first shows how much reviews you will be
|
||||
doing per month in total. Yellow is the amount of new (or unseen) facts, red are
|
||||
reviews (or reps) of old facts. Below that is the amount of reviews per day for
|
||||
each month. As you can see, the daily workload is at most 20 minutes and goes
|
||||
does down rapidly. After 5 months, you know all 漢字 and will only be
|
||||
refreshing. And that's only for a moderate amount of work with 20 new facts per
|
||||
day. You can easily do 50, or even 100 if you are determined. Pretty good,
|
||||
right?
|
||||
|
||||
Redundancy
|
||||
----------
|
||||
|
||||
Unfortunately, that's quite enough. To remember something well, you need a third
|
||||
thing: **redundancy**. Your brain is associative. The more connection a
|
||||
particular memory has, the stronger it is, no matter where the connection comes
|
||||
from. Fortunately, we can fix this problem rather easily: just add redundant
|
||||
information. If you add a specific piece of information, say a new word, only
|
||||
once to your deck, you will have a hard time learning it. Add it in 3 to 5
|
||||
different sentences, and suddenly it will be trivial.
|
||||
|
||||
A nice side effect is that added redundancy makes the individual cards easier,
|
||||
making reviews faster. The additional workload is only about 2, maybe 3 times.
|
||||
Still, seeing how ridiculously low it already is, this doesn't really matter at
|
||||
all.
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,176 @@
|
|||
% Meditation on Xmonad
|
||||
|
||||
Ignorance is the root of all suffering - ignorance about reality,
|
||||
about what is. By holding wrong assumptions, we create false
|
||||
expectations and false needs. [^0]
|
||||
|
||||
I will not reflect on large parts of reality, but only a small one: window
|
||||
managers (WM). [^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The most basic ignorance about WMs is the ignorance about
|
||||
their existence. The computer does not just show data to us, but it can show it
|
||||
to us in any way we want. It is this basic understanding that leads to the first
|
||||
conclusion: If the way data is shown to us is lacking, it is not our fault, but
|
||||
the computer is not doing it's job properly. Furthermore, if we have to spend a
|
||||
lot of time just telling the computer how we would like to see something, we are
|
||||
actually doing someone (or rather, something) else's work.
|
||||
|
||||
Therefore, tiling WMs. If you arrange your own windows, why are you using a WM
|
||||
at all? Wouldn't it be more honest, instead of saying "I'm running Windows / KDE
|
||||
/ OS X to show my windows", to admit "Windows / KDE / OS X is running me to show
|
||||
it's windows."? Sure, the computer can not read your mind and some occasional
|
||||
hints might be necessary, but the less work you do, the better.
|
||||
|
||||
Desire creates suffering. This is maybe the most misunderstood of Buddhist
|
||||
truths. People hear "desire creates suffering" and think "What? Is this going to
|
||||
be a moral how material possessions are bad for me? Money, cars, houses and so
|
||||
on lead to greed, obsession, and so on. I get it.". This is not what this is
|
||||
about. The problem with desire is not the desire itself. It is not a problem
|
||||
that we want to be happy, to be rich and so on. The problem is, instead, that
|
||||
what we want is impossible. Our desires *fail* us. We are mistaken about the
|
||||
nature of reality and expect the wrong things. We think that money could make us
|
||||
happier, so we want more of it, but it ultimately won't. From wrong assumptions
|
||||
you can only get bad results.
|
||||
|
||||
In retrospect, I can see this clearly now on my journey to a better window
|
||||
manager. It was my unwillingness to let go of old habits, my wrong ideas about
|
||||
what I really need or want, that made adopting a new WM hard. So I went first to
|
||||
WMs that offered great configuralibity and many features. "You can do anything
|
||||
you want!" But this lead to useless features and distractions. It is only now
|
||||
that most WMs fail me because my hardware setup is a bit tricky, that I can
|
||||
understand. Only now when I understand better what my brain really needs, do I
|
||||
grow tired of those full of bad design. Xmonad, in a way, is peace for me. It
|
||||
is mathematical in nature. The fact that it is written in Haskell might seem
|
||||
like a gimmick at first, but the connection is in fact very deep. I understand
|
||||
now that it could not have been written in anything else. Xmonad exemplifies the
|
||||
idea of purely functional programming. "Normal" programming is almost always
|
||||
imperative - the programmer tells the computer how to do something. But in
|
||||
functional programming, the hacker instead tells the computer what something
|
||||
*is*. This is a profound difference.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
In any other customizable WM I have ever used, I would create a complex
|
||||
configuration to tell it exactly what I wanted it to do in some case or another.
|
||||
I would do the bulk of the lifting, so to speak, either by constantly adjusting
|
||||
the windows the WM handled wrong or by writing elaborate procedures to automate
|
||||
this work. But with Xmonad, this is different. It is not my job to figure out
|
||||
how to arrange windows, so I should never have to tell my WM anything about
|
||||
this. The only thing I ever have to tell it is about what is. I should never
|
||||
write something like "to go to the next tag, you read in all tags, sort them,
|
||||
filter some out, find the current one and then shift to the next in the list".
|
||||
I instead write: "I want the next non-empty, non-visible tag now". I give
|
||||
Xmonad a few simple hints and that is it. "If it's name is in this list, I want
|
||||
it floating. If I'm currently out of space here, try a different screen. There
|
||||
is a status bar I'm running, so be careful not to overlap it."
|
||||
|
||||
For the first time, I feel like my WM is actually intelligent and wants to help
|
||||
me. It is not my slave, not my servant who follows my orders. It does not look
|
||||
down on me, thinking itself smarter than me, only an obstacle to its flawless
|
||||
performance. Instead, Xmonad is my friend. It understands window handling and
|
||||
can take care of it. I only tell it some personal preferences. If it doesn't
|
||||
think I need something, it is probably right.
|
||||
|
||||
It is astonishing how easily we pick up delusions. We see something once and
|
||||
think it should always be that way. Rarely do we question "Is this really
|
||||
necessary? Is there no other way?"
|
||||
|
||||
For me, those are some of the delusions that clouded my
|
||||
judgement about WMs.
|
||||
|
||||
"I need space! I want to see my desktop wallpaper!" What for? Have I not
|
||||
something better to do than to stare at pretty pictures?
|
||||
|
||||
"I want to tell my WM what window is in the foreground and what in the
|
||||
background." The very concept is wrong. There is no "foreground" with focus -
|
||||
you either see something or you don't. A window you can not read might as well
|
||||
not be there at all.
|
||||
|
||||
"I understand now, I use a tiling WM. But I want to control what window is
|
||||
where!" Why? The very idea of a tiling WM is that the WM figures out what to
|
||||
show you and how. You simply tell it what application has your focus right now
|
||||
and what other applications belong to it (by giving them all the same tag /
|
||||
workspace).
|
||||
|
||||
"Xmonad has no stacked layout like wmii! I can not easily put dozens of windows
|
||||
in one column!" Why would you do this in the first place? You certainly can not
|
||||
read them all. Let Xmonad only show you the ones that matter and search for
|
||||
other ones if you need them. Or think about grouping them better. Why open 20
|
||||
PDFs in separate windows if your viewer can take care of that?
|
||||
|
||||
"Xmonad has no title bars.[^4] I will miss those!" Are you sure? What do you use
|
||||
them for? The window content itself tells you what the window is. If the
|
||||
content is not visible, then a title bar will only waste space. If you need to
|
||||
find something, let the WM do it for you. If you want status reports, use
|
||||
notifications.
|
||||
|
||||
By embracing not complexity, but simplicity, confusion ends. The best solution
|
||||
to a problem is to make it obsolete - as Gordon Bells said, "The cheapest,
|
||||
fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.".
|
||||
|
||||
By concentrating not on *how*, but on *what*, false
|
||||
desires disappear. By letting go off false desires, suffering ends.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[^0]: Yeah, I have been reading Buddhist philosophy and history
|
||||
again. Can you tell?
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: The old monks have understood one thing: Truths about reality must be
|
||||
visible everywhere. There can not be any aspect of reality that is not
|
||||
permeated by them. Thus, we can improve our efforts by just focusing on one
|
||||
simple object. Traditionally, one's breath, a candle or a rock have served
|
||||
this purpose. Some Zen traditions use 只管打坐 (shikantaza, "simply correct
|
||||
sitting") for this. If you can't understand reality just by sitting down and
|
||||
concentrating, then reality can't be understood at all. Therefore we must
|
||||
be able to see all those Buddhist observations in everything we use,
|
||||
including the most fundamental GUI software - our window manager.
|
||||
|
||||
[^3]: The classical example to demonstrate this is Quicksort. If you have ever
|
||||
programmed something, Quicksort was probably among it, but just to help you
|
||||
remember, I'm gonna tell you again what Quicksort is. We define Quicksort
|
||||
recursively like so: An empty sort is always sorted. To sort a list with at
|
||||
least one element, we take the first element (called the pivot) in the list
|
||||
and then separate the rest into two lists, one containing all the elements
|
||||
that are smaller and one containing all that are larger than the pivot. Now,
|
||||
to get the sorted result, we simply sort the first list, than add the pivot
|
||||
and finally add the sorted second list. Think about how you would solve this
|
||||
in an imperative language. In C, it would go something like this:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.c}
|
||||
void swap(int *a, int *b)
|
||||
{
|
||||
int t=*a; *a=*b; *b=t;
|
||||
}
|
||||
void sort(int arr[], int beg, int end)
|
||||
{
|
||||
if (end > beg + 1) {
|
||||
int piv = arr[beg], l = beg + 1, r = end;
|
||||
while (l < r) {
|
||||
if (arr[l] <= piv)
|
||||
l++;
|
||||
else
|
||||
swap(&arr[l], &arr[--r]);
|
||||
}
|
||||
swap(&arr[--l], &arr[beg]);
|
||||
sort(arr, beg, l);
|
||||
sort(arr, r, end);
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
This is a typical example - we tell the computer exactly what to do to get
|
||||
the result we are interested in. But remember I said that in a functional
|
||||
language, we tell the computer what something *is*. I already told you what
|
||||
Quicksort is, so let's write this down in Haskell:
|
||||
|
||||
~~~ {.haskell}
|
||||
qsort [] = []
|
||||
qsort (x:xs) = qsort lesser ++ [x] ++ qsort greater
|
||||
where lesser = [y | y <- xs, y < x]
|
||||
greater = [y | y <- xs, y >= x]
|
||||
~~~
|
||||
|
||||
And that's it.
|
||||
|
||||
[^4]: Technically, you can add them, but they are not normally there.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
|||
% ashuku - personal statistics tool
|
||||
|
||||
Statistics. I love statistics.
|
||||
===============================
|
||||
|
||||
And graphs. Graphs are cool, too.
|
||||
|
||||
It's funny, actually. I really suck at statistics. I have a hard time
|
||||
understanding probabilities and statistics is probably the one mathematical
|
||||
field I understand the least. But I still love it. I track a lot of data and
|
||||
love reading tables. I have several books full of yearly death statistics,
|
||||
broken down by age, gender, cause, region and so on. Some of the greatest stuff
|
||||
I ever read. Crime statistics are really cool as well.
|
||||
|
||||
Anyway, it might come as no surprise to you then that I like correlating
|
||||
personal data. If I do this change in my life, how does it affect me? Is their a
|
||||
correlation between sleep time and happiness? What about nutritional
|
||||
supplements? So I wrote a tool to track and analyze just this.[^perl]
|
||||
|
||||
enter ashuku
|
||||
=============
|
||||
|
||||
I'm lazy, so let's just quote the readme:
|
||||
|
||||
> ashuku is a tool to track a multitude of daily statistics, like mood and
|
||||
> health. Its design goals are simplicity and fast usage. ashuku can draw
|
||||
> graphs [citation needed] and analyze data for correlation. Data is stored in
|
||||
> plain text files in YAML. It's easy to read for both humans and machines.
|
||||
> ashuku is named after one of the 5 Wisdom Buddhas, 阿閦如来 (ashuku nyorai).
|
||||
> He is immovable and reflects all emotions like a mirror, showing things as
|
||||
> they really are. ashuku is strongly influenced by todo.txt.
|
||||
|
||||
Here's a screenshot. It's fully customizable, so don't be afraid of
|
||||
the Japanese UI. It's in English by default and you can change it
|
||||
however you want. :)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I've been using it since 2009/09/12. The data before that is from a different
|
||||
tool and partially incomplete, so there. You can grab it here:
|
||||
|
||||
http://github.com/muflax/ashuku
|
||||
|
||||
[^perl]: Well, the second one, actually. The first one was a Perl script and...
|
||||
you know what they say about Perl code. It's all true, unfortunately.
|
||||
Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 38 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
|
|||
% Software
|
||||
|
||||
Software
|
||||
========
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Some of the stuff I wrote.
|
||||
|
||||
- my [vim] config and complete feature list
|
||||
- [ashuku], a personal statistics tool
|
||||
- [saneo], my keyboard layout
|
||||
|
||||
[ashuku]: /software/ashuku.html
|
||||
[saneo]: /software/saneo.html
|
||||
[vim]: /software/vim.html
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1 @@
|
|||
title: Software
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
|
|||
% saneo - putting the sane back into Neo
|
||||
|
||||
As outlined in my [rant], [Neo 2] sucks. So I designed my own keyboard layout.
|
||||
|
||||
Design Principles
|
||||
=================
|
||||
|
||||
1) Hands should move as little as possible and never leave home row. This is a
|
||||
pretty basic requirement, but it prevents me from moving some rarer
|
||||
combinations to the outside of the keyboard.
|
||||
|
||||
2) I must not give up any functionality. Specificially, I must still be able to
|
||||
type in (among others) French, German and Japanese, be able to programm
|
||||
efficiently and have enough keys left to handle Xmonad.
|
||||
|
||||
3) The computer should do as much work for me as possible. If I can let it figure
|
||||
out what I meant and safe a few keystrokes in the average case, I will do it.
|
||||
|
||||
Solutions
|
||||
=========
|
||||
|
||||
First, I use my IME more aggressively than before. I'm currently using scim
|
||||
(with anthy and tables) to input any normal text beyond ASCII. This is pretty
|
||||
normal for Japanese, were you type 黒い猫 (kuroi neko, black cat) by activating
|
||||
Japanese mode, then inputting "kuroineko[SPACE]" and the IME converts this first
|
||||
into syllables (くろいねこ, ku ro i ne ko) and then tries to guess the correct
|
||||
meaning. I have already started using this for German a while ago and now use it
|
||||
for all diacritics. For example, I switch to European mode and then input
|
||||
"Verschw"orung" to get "Verschwörung" (conspiracy). This works pretty well
|
||||
because all diacritics are rare anyway and justify the additional key stroke.
|
||||
Each language (family) has its own mode to keep them simple and because I almost
|
||||
never mix them anyway.
|
||||
|
||||
Second, I redesigned the Mod3 level completely. I can't move the punctuation
|
||||
characters inside my IME, because I generally mix them with normal text (typing
|
||||
something like "\$editor =~ s/vi[m]/emacs/g") and the IME would slow this down a
|
||||
lot. Inputting something like "\\s" for "\$" isn't that cool and breaks many
|
||||
hotkeys.
|
||||
|
||||
If it were not for programming, I would actually switch to a pseudo-latin input
|
||||
where similar characters would be merged and the IME would tell them apart, e.g.
|
||||
I would put i, j and y on the same key "i" and let the IME decide which to use.
|
||||
This works all pretty well for normal text, but in virtually any programming
|
||||
language, most letters are used frequently and, as a group, more often than
|
||||
punctuation. Having different layouts for different contexts, however, only
|
||||
makes a big mess.
|
||||
|
||||
Third, I improved the Mod4 level, making it easier to reach Tab and Escape, and
|
||||
arranged the cursor keys like in vim. I also replaced the duplicated keypad
|
||||
(seriously?!) with normal numbers and moved the 0 from Space to b.
|
||||
|
||||
Finally, I moved the J, X and Y, and removed all those silly additional levels
|
||||
and German characters, though. If I had to start over, I'd choose something like
|
||||
Dvorak as a base. Nonetheless, the current arrangement is good enough. A few
|
||||
keys are redundant because they started out in a bad position, then moved to a
|
||||
better one and I saw no need to leave the old one empty. As you can see, the
|
||||
Mod3 level has still quite some open positions.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
You can grab it at [github]. *saneo* is my normal (xbd) layout, *neo.map* is a
|
||||
basic console version, *Euro.txt* is my user-table for scim to input any diacritic
|
||||
characters and the rest is mostly spam. ;)
|
||||
|
||||
[github]: http://github.com/muflax/saneo
|
||||
[Neo 2]: http://neo-layout.org/
|
||||
[rant]: /rants/neo.html
|
||||
Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 23 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,244 @@
|
|||
% vim
|
||||
|
||||
alias evil="for s in {1..3}; do echo -n 'VI! '; sleep .7; done; echo; vi"
|
||||
|
||||
Hello, my name is muflax, and I am a vim addict. My ~/.vim directory is about
|
||||
6MB large and contains 20,000 lines of code[^0]. I use so many features, that I
|
||||
often forget about some of them. Heck, I implemented tab completion for code 3
|
||||
times because I forgot that I already did it each time and only noticed it
|
||||
months later during a cleanup!
|
||||
|
||||
[^0]: To be fair, I store every plugin there and never install any system-wide
|
||||
so that my setup is mostly independent from the current machine.
|
||||
|
||||
It couldn't go on like this. My memory couldn't keep up with this. I probably
|
||||
only knew half the hotkeys I have mapped myself. I dream of vim; have terrible
|
||||
nightmares because I can't remember how to automatically create a list of
|
||||
ascending numbers. I have spent more time this year implementing or tweaking
|
||||
something in vim than programming in general. (Ok, this is slightly exaggerated.
|
||||
But only slightly.)
|
||||
|
||||
Now, if I were sane, I would cut down my config a lot, or switch to a GUI editor
|
||||
(TextMate is very nice) that remembers my features for me, or just switch to
|
||||
emacs[^emacs] already, because I'm at least halfway there anyway.
|
||||
|
||||
[^emacs]: But why not emacs? To be honest, emacs is great. It is easily the
|
||||
second-best editor and some parts of it outshine vim easily, like process
|
||||
integration or the higher level of semantic awareness. I only have two problems
|
||||
with it.
|
||||
|
||||
The first is I-know-what's-best-for-you syndrome, i.e. emacs often
|
||||
enforces a specific behaviour that it thinks is right. Well, most of the time,
|
||||
emacs _is_ right, but occasionally it just stands in my way. The most annoying
|
||||
thing was the lack of a permanent visual mode as in vim aka the ability to move
|
||||
my cursor freely to any position on the screen.
|
||||
|
||||
The second problem is LISP. I hate LISP. I refuse to learn it. I refuse to
|
||||
deal with people that like it. (But afaik there may be some ports to a sane
|
||||
language, so maybe this point is moot nowadays.)
|
||||
|
||||
Luckily, I am not sane. So instead, I just made another [SRS] deck, and put in
|
||||
all those features, using a card each, and then just learned them like
|
||||
everything else. Hey, I have fully outsourced my long-term memory, I might as
|
||||
well use it for stuff that matters!
|
||||
|
||||
And to cultivate this deck, I needed a complete list of all vim features I
|
||||
currently (should) know. All of them! So here it is, in no particular order,
|
||||
including all relevant plugins. You can just google them or check my [config] on
|
||||
github.
|
||||
|
||||
I'm gonna leave out all the very elementary features everyone knows, like / or
|
||||
dd, and some of the hotkeys are mine, obviously, not standard. I'll also skip
|
||||
over config-only features because you don't need to remember those. See the
|
||||
awesome help for what they do.
|
||||
|
||||
The List
|
||||
========
|
||||
|
||||
1. **ci(** aka change inside, deletes everything the current set of () and puts
|
||||
you into insert mode. Works the same way for all closures, like **ci"** or
|
||||
**ci{**, or use **cib** for the current block. Apart from **c** for change,
|
||||
this also works with **d** and **y**. **d%** deletes everything until it
|
||||
hits a (matched) parenthesis.
|
||||
|
||||
2. **yankring** plugin, implements a yankring like the killring in emacs.
|
||||
Automagically manages your buffers when copying or deleting something,
|
||||
allowing you to cycle through it when yanking it back into the text. Very
|
||||
useful when cut-and-pasting multiple parts. Use just like normal yanking,
|
||||
C-p to cycle, :YRShow for a list. Also shares yank buffer among all
|
||||
instances (omg its heavan).
|
||||
|
||||
3. **C-x** and **C-a**, in CM, de/increments the currently
|
||||
selected value. See my config for an enhancement to make it work
|
||||
with boolean values, too (using **gy**).
|
||||
|
||||
4. **gq**, re-formats the selection, breaking lines and so on.
|
||||
|
||||
5. **\>**, **<** and **=**, on a selection, indent
|
||||
right/left/automagically. Great for pasting or reworking loops.
|
||||
|
||||
8. Some **ctags** features. **[i** shows the first line contain
|
||||
the word under the cursor (good to look up a declaration),
|
||||
**C-w i** opens it in a new window, **C-]** (and for me,
|
||||
**C-Space**) jumps to the definition of the current keyword,
|
||||
**:tag [keyword]** dito.
|
||||
|
||||
9. **folding**, to show/hide code levels. I put fold in and out
|
||||
both on **Space** and fold according to syntax. Useful for complex
|
||||
source code.
|
||||
|
||||
10. **:bprev** and **:bnext** to switch buffers (I put them on
|
||||
**F1** and **F2**), also **:tabprev** and **:tabnext** (**gT** and
|
||||
**gt**), like in vimperator, for tabs.
|
||||
|
||||
11. **NERDtree** plugin, **:NERDtree**, as a nice integrated file
|
||||
manager. Occasionally useful.
|
||||
|
||||
12. **:jesus**, because Jesus saves. Your file. (Uses **cmdalias**
|
||||
plugin, dito the next one.)
|
||||
|
||||
13. **:pd** or **:perldo**, for a more powerful regex engine.
|
||||
|
||||
14. **WW**, to just save a file. Faster than **:w<CR\>**.
|
||||
|
||||
15. **pastetoggle**, on **F3**, to toggle paste mode, i.e. yanking
|
||||
text with or without formating it.
|
||||
|
||||
16. **F11** and **F12** to automagically **underline** the current
|
||||
line, used in my notes for headers. See my config.
|
||||
|
||||
17. **Align** and **AutoAlign** plugin, to align multiple lines in
|
||||
intelligent ways. I mostly use it to align multiple variable
|
||||
declarations around the = sign, which Align even does automagically
|
||||
for some languages. Use on a selection with **:Align=** or any
|
||||
other sign.
|
||||
|
||||
18. **BufExplorer**, to get a nice list of open buffers, use with
|
||||
**\\be**. Builtin, of course, is **:ls**, which is also nice.
|
||||
|
||||
19. **a.vim**, alternate between source/header files via **:A**.
|
||||
Also, **\\ih** and **\\is** jumps to header/source file under the
|
||||
cursor.
|
||||
|
||||
20. **matchit** plugin, extends the **%** command, which jumps (in
|
||||
order) to the innermost parentheses on the left, then its match on
|
||||
the right. **matchit** enables it for tags and so on, too.
|
||||
|
||||
21. **taglist** plugin, a nice sidebar for method names and shit,
|
||||
like in IDEs. Use with **:Tlist**. Occasionally useful.
|
||||
|
||||
22. **template** plugin, uses file templates instead of blank files
|
||||
for certain file types.
|
||||
|
||||
23. **"\*y** and all related yank operations. Yank into the X11
|
||||
clipboard, so that you can share among vim instances. **yankring**
|
||||
already covers this, but still useful sometimes for other apps.
|
||||
Requires vim to be compiled with X11 bindings.
|
||||
|
||||
24. **\*** in CM, searches for the word under the cursor.
|
||||
|
||||
25. **gU** + motion, **gUU** for whole line, turns it uppercase.
|
||||
**gu** for lowercase, **g\~** to toggle it.
|
||||
|
||||
26. **J** and **gJ**, to join lines, removing (or not) spaces as
|
||||
necessary.
|
||||
|
||||
27. **R** to enter replace mode, nice for changing constants. I
|
||||
can't believe how late I learned that one.
|
||||
|
||||
28. **!cmd**, filter text through cmd. Very useful with selecting
|
||||
some text in visual mode and then doing a **!sort** on them.
|
||||
|
||||
29. **:&** repeats a search, allowing you to change its flags (add
|
||||
a **/g**, for example). Also, **:%s///** for the whole file, btw.
|
||||
|
||||
30. **:sm/foo/bar/** or **:s/\\vfoo/bar/**, to activate regex
|
||||
magic, like () and so on. Far nicer than vim's standard, but
|
||||
**:pd** is even nicer.
|
||||
|
||||
31. **:retab**, replace tabs with proper whitespace.
|
||||
|
||||
32. **vimdiff $file1 $file2**, use vim as a diff tool. Hopefully
|
||||
you know this one already, use **do** and **dp** to move chunk
|
||||
here/away (obtain / push).
|
||||
|
||||
33. **:vimgrep**, grep inside vim. D'uh.
|
||||
|
||||
34. **C-v** enters visual block mode. I always forget this one when
|
||||
I need it.
|
||||
|
||||
35. **{**and **}** move backwards/forwards through paragraphs, dito
|
||||
**(** and **)** for sentences. (I really use the cursor too much
|
||||
instead of vim's better syntactic movements.)
|
||||
|
||||
36. Speaking of movement, **b** and **w** move to the next word on
|
||||
the left/right, **e** moves to the end of the word. Use those,
|
||||
like, a lot.
|
||||
|
||||
37. **daw** deletes the current word (from anywhere in it), **das**
|
||||
the current sentence.
|
||||
|
||||
38. **g;** and **g,** cycle backwards/forwards through your
|
||||
changelist, putting your cursor there. So you can go somewhere
|
||||
else, look something up, then jump right back to where you where.
|
||||
Dito **C-o**, **C-i** and **:jumps** for jumps instead of changes.
|
||||
Awesomesauce.
|
||||
|
||||
39. **m[register]** saves the current location in a register,
|
||||
**\`[register]** jumps back to it, **\`\`** jumps to the last
|
||||
location.
|
||||
|
||||
40. **u** and **C-r** are undo/redo, **U** undoes all changes on
|
||||
the current line. So far, so good. But vim also has a powerful undo
|
||||
tree. **:undol** shows the undo list, and **g-** and **g+** move
|
||||
you along it. You can also use **:earlier** and **:later**, in
|
||||
combination with either a count or [n]s, [n]m or [n]h for a time.
|
||||
No if only vim could merge branches like Photoshop can...
|
||||
|
||||
41. **f[char]** and **t[char]** move you on/before the next
|
||||
occurrence of [char] on the right, **F**and **T** on the left.
|
||||
**;** and **,** repeats this movement in the same/opposite
|
||||
direction. Of course, can be combined with deletion and so on.
|
||||
|
||||
42. **:make** executes make and jumps to the first compile error,
|
||||
if any. (But I normally prefer to have a second terminal open for
|
||||
that.)
|
||||
|
||||
43. **surround**plugin, mostly provides keys to change or remove
|
||||
surroundings (blocks, quotes or tags). Use like **ds"** to remove "
|
||||
quotes, **dst** to remove text block, **cs"(** to replace "" with
|
||||
() and **ys[motion]{** to wrap something in {}. Works in visual
|
||||
mode, too, of course.****(Also install the **repeat** plugin, to be
|
||||
able to repeat the surround commands. Works like normal repeating.)
|
||||
|
||||
44. **FuzzyFinder** plugin, plus the **FuzzyFinderTextMate**
|
||||
plugin, to have far nice fuzzy matching of buffers, files and so
|
||||
on. I have **\\b**, **\\f** and **\\o** mapped to buffers, files
|
||||
and everything (as in TextMate). Incredibly useful. (See
|
||||
[here](http://codeulate.com/2010/02/installing-fuzzyfinder_textmate-textmates-cmdt-in-vim/)
|
||||
for installation instructions.)
|
||||
|
||||
45. **NERDcommenter** plugin for more intelligent commenting. Most
|
||||
importantly, **\\cSpace** to toggle commenting, **\\cc** to comment
|
||||
out, **\\cu** to remove comments.
|
||||
|
||||
46. window movement, most importantly:**C-W w** (and**\\\_**) to
|
||||
jump to the next window, **C-W s** to split horizontally, **C-W v**
|
||||
to split vertically, **C-W <** / **\>** / **=** to increase /
|
||||
decrease /equalize window sizes.
|
||||
|
||||
47. **:set spell** for spell checking, **]s** and **[s**to move to
|
||||
the next/last misspelled word, **zg** to add to the dictionary,
|
||||
**zug** to undo it, **z=** for suggestions.
|
||||
|
||||
48. **SuperTab** plugin, to tab-complete *everything*. Yes,
|
||||
everything. It's pretty smart and works well with omnicomplete.
|
||||
Using my options, it works just like them cool IDEs.
|
||||
|
||||
49. **snipMate** plugin, steals the snippet function from TextMate,
|
||||
to tab-complete code fragments into common structures. Great
|
||||
speedup! (I also tried **XPtemplate**, which is too ugly and hard
|
||||
to use, and **UltiSnips**, which was buggy.)
|
||||
|
||||
[SRS]: srs.html
|
||||
[config]: http://github.com/muflax/config
|
||||
Binary file not shown.
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 8.4 KiB |
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,177 @@
|
|||
body {
|
||||
background: #ffffcc;
|
||||
color: #222;
|
||||
font-size: 1em;
|
||||
font-weight: normal;
|
||||
font-family: serif;
|
||||
line-height: 1.3;
|
||||
text-align: justify;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
div.main {
|
||||
margin: 3.5em auto auto;
|
||||
max-width: 40em;
|
||||
padding: 0;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
div.crumb {
|
||||
background: #562D6F;
|
||||
color: #d9d9d9;
|
||||
left: 0;
|
||||
line-height: 2em;
|
||||
position: fixed;
|
||||
text-align: center;
|
||||
top: 0;
|
||||
width: 100%;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
a:link.crumb, a:hover.crumb, a:visited.crumb, a:active.crumb {
|
||||
color: #d9d9d9;
|
||||
font-size: 1.3em;
|
||||
font-weight: bold;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
a:hover {
|
||||
background: #057dff;
|
||||
color: #fff;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
p {
|
||||
margin: 1em;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
em {
|
||||
color: #562D6F;
|
||||
font-style: italic;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
strong {
|
||||
color: green;
|
||||
font-weight: bold;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
img {
|
||||
display: block;
|
||||
margin-left: auto;
|
||||
margin-right: auto;
|
||||
max-width: 100%;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
div.figure {
|
||||
text-align: center;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
h1 {
|
||||
background: #7D9B3E;
|
||||
color: #000000;
|
||||
font-size: 2em;
|
||||
line-height: 1.3;
|
||||
text-align: center;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
h1 a:link, h1 a:visited, h1 a:active {
|
||||
color: #000;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
h2 {
|
||||
background: #AAd398;
|
||||
color: #000000;
|
||||
font-size: 1.3em;
|
||||
font-weight:normal;
|
||||
line-height: 1.3;
|
||||
margin-left: 0.2em;
|
||||
margin-right: 0.2em;
|
||||
padding-left: 0.5em;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
blockquote {
|
||||
border-left: 10px solid #A6A542;
|
||||
border-right: 10px solid #A6A542;
|
||||
margin-left: 1em;
|
||||
margin-right: 1em;
|
||||
padding-left: 0;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
ol {
|
||||
margin-left: 1em;
|
||||
padding-left: 1em;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
ul {
|
||||
list-style: none;
|
||||
margin-left: 0;
|
||||
padding-left: 1em;
|
||||
text-indent: -1em;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
ul li:before {
|
||||
content: "\00BB \0020";
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
a.footnoteRef {
|
||||
margin-left: 0.1em;
|
||||
font-size: 1.3em;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre {
|
||||
background: #FFF8D9;
|
||||
border: 1px dashed green;
|
||||
font-family: monospace !important;
|
||||
line-height: 1.3em;
|
||||
overflow: auto;
|
||||
padding: 0.5em 1em;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Keyword {
|
||||
color: #007020;
|
||||
font-weight: bold;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.DataType {
|
||||
color: #902000;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.DecVal {
|
||||
color: red;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.BaseN {
|
||||
color: red;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Float {
|
||||
color: red;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Char {
|
||||
color: #562D6F;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.String {
|
||||
color: #4070a0;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Comment {
|
||||
color: #843563;
|
||||
font-style: italic;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Others {
|
||||
color: #007020;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Alert {
|
||||
color: red;
|
||||
font-weight: bold;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Function {
|
||||
color: #06287e;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.Error {
|
||||
color: red;
|
||||
font-weight: bold;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
pre.sourceCode span.RegionMarker { }
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
|||
body{
|
||||
background-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-base-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-3dlight-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-arrow-color:#ffffff;
|
||||
scrollbar-darkshadow-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-face-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-highlight-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-shadow-color:#000000;
|
||||
scrollbar-track-color:#000000;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
p{
|
||||
color:#FFFFFF;
|
||||
font-family:Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
|
||||
font-size:11px;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
a:link,a:active {text-decoration:none; color:#ffFFFF;}
|
||||
a:visited {text-decoration:none; color:#ffffff;}
|
||||
a:hover {text-decoration:underline; color:#ffffff;}
|
||||
|
||||
.zentrum{
|
||||
border:1 dashed white;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
.innerzentrum{
|
||||
padding: 5 5 5 5;
|
||||
vertical-align:top;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
.silencio{
|
||||
font-size: 38px;
|
||||
font-style: italic;
|
||||
font-weight: bold;
|
||||
color: #990000;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
|
@ -16,7 +16,6 @@ import subprocess
|
|||
import sys
|
||||
|
||||
import PyRSS2Gen as RSS2
|
||||
import clevercss
|
||||
import yaml
|
||||
try:
|
||||
from yaml import CLoader as Loader
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue