December 2011

There were 10 posts published in December 2011 (this is page 1 of 1).

#IWasThinking S01E03: Why philosophy and questioning our reality is important

We should also be looking for the next leap in philosophy trends, we need new forms of interpreting reality to have a leap in technological progress. (just the way the introduction of “science” (scientific method, testability) propelled us to the world in which we are now)

Learning and living philosophy is REALLY important. Just as we evolve in every other knowledge field, we must evolve as philosophers. When some philosophers decided that reality had to be questioned (tested) we came up with the scientific method, which brought about more innovation in the last 200 years than in thousands before it. Just because we started questioning our reality differently than before (like shit was made by god and stuff, we learned stars where massive balls of hydrogen and helium collapsing into heavier elements which make up most of what you and I are made of.

What will the next breakthrough in philosophy bring to the aid of our creativity?

Temptation, Miami Beach

Temptation
Miami Beach FL, August 2011

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

#IWasThinking E01S02: American Nutritional trends and how they will affect our future

Something as simple as the invention and adoption of bread was a key driver for the foundations of agriculture and the evolution of civilization.

I think the outlook of the future is not so good when we look at the eating habits of the average american person, which seems to be similar to other consumption habits in American society. We eat crap, we buy crap, we watch crap, we listen to crap, we waste time on stupid things, the top search trends on Google show that americans just care about gossip and vanal things.

If the future of this country depends on the majority of the people in it (and not in a brilliant few that drive innovation and cannibalize on the majority), I think american supremacy has its days numbered, not to mention that we’re going to keep spending a lot of money on healthcare thanks to our eating habits.

Photoshop: How to Convert a Path into a Shape

So you wanted to create a Custom Shape on photoshop but you started drawing a path because of the nature of what you were doing (or because you forgot to change the pen mode to Shape) and now when you want to right click > “Define Custom Path…” it’s disabled in the menu.

Here’s the solution:

1. Select the path with the path selection tool.
2. Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. (Or use the Create new fill or adjustment layer button in the layers palette)
3. You have turned a path into a new shape layer.

#IWasThinking E01S01: The complexity of the world depends on human interaction.

I suck at small talk, I like to think about other things, all my true friends aren’t here so I thought I might as well meet some other like minded people by recording a series of thought starters.

On this first episode I talk about realizing that the complexity of the world depends directly on the level of interactions that humans have with each other. The more of us that can do more specialized things, when working together bring technology forward. Therefore, think of all the things that will come out as the internet (and other technologies) empowers us to work together on all fields of human knowledge.

If I get enough traction the plan is to shoot outside, in HD, edit to minimize playback time and save you time, and basically produce a whole season (22 episodes each)

#iwasthinking

can you imagine being at least 25 years old and connecting to the internet for the first time today?

I realized last night that the possibility our minds have to create mental models outside the physical world (abstractions) the internet works so well.

I think my mental model of the internet reality is several orders of magnitude larger to that which I’ve experienced in the physical world, and in a way sometimes it seems more tangible because we can interact with these abstract models like if we had super powers.

Now imagine connecting for the first time to the internet today, and having lived all your life without using its benefits to your advantages. Without guiding hands and coming to the realization that you are a “new born” dealing with the likes of some of us who have been here for well over 15 years, and who have had the time to create a more accurate mental model of what the internet really is, it must be quite scary and fascinating joining this world today, probably way more exciting than it was for you or for me because there’s already all of these possibilities many of us dreamed of having at first, to the newbie, the internet culture crash course must be quite intimidating.

Going back to the mental models we make out of internet websites, services, protocols, brands, any internet entrepreneur should know that to all these newbies you have the same chance of looking as big as coca cola on the internet, to the many new users if you provide a great experience and something unique you will be as big as you can in their minds.

Godel, Turing and Church make the best criticism against Kurzweil’s singularity capabilities

Reading the chapter on Criticisms against the singularity, the strongest one so far, the one to which Kurzweil makes a really weak argument using the example of the “Busy Beaver” problem is putting Godel’s incompleteness theorems and Turings and Church’s findings of the limitations of logic and math to solve problems.

Kurzweil basically has no counter argument against this, yet he tries to distract the reader with the Tibor Rado’s “Busy Beaver” problem. He says they managed to compute the Busy Beaver function for a number of N’s that would be impossible for any human to calculate, however, this is merely an example of how a computer can handle more numbers better than humans, yet, this is no example of how logic could be different in a turing machine than from the human brain.

Given enough time (probably till the end of it), human beings could in theory compute those results, given the computers that can do it were programmed with human logic. This also means, that if there are unsolvable problems (on which immortality could well be one of them), a turing machine (a computer) would not be able to solve given the limitations of logic and math.