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March 18th, 2008
08:15 pm - "Why?"
"Why?" is by far the most interesting and meaningful question. It can be used to look backwards at causation "why does a ball fall when it is dropped?", or to look forwards towards ends being achieved by means "why did you drop the ball?". While causation is interesting as well, I find philosophical meaningfulness in the means/ends aspect of "Why?", and so will be talking about that kind of "Why?".
It can be argued that "Why?" may never be properly answered for anything if one chains it by asking "Why?" to the answer of the previous "Why?". The possible results of such a "Why?"-chain include:
- a cycle: by repeating a previous answer in the chain, implying that the cycle is an ends unto itself, and thusly meaningless. An example of this is self-perpetuation, like the answer "Humans exist to reproduce".
- "I don't know": an admission to not being able to answer "Why?"
- "Because X": an end to inquiry based on the idea that X is an ultimate end for all the means mentioned in the chain, and that X is not a means towards any other end. An example of this is an answer like "Human happiness" or "God's will". One could argue that these vague answers are an admission to a lack of knowledge of what end they are a means towards. Why should humans be happy? Why did God will that?
- "Just Because": a refusal to continue the chain out of annoyance at the persistent questioning.
Attempting to answer "Why?" often reveals one's philosophical and particularly moral beliefs. It attempts to define "The Good".
For myself, I would lean towards "the happiness of sufficiently sentient beings". Even this comes with a lot of unknowns:
- I don't know what purpose that happiness serves, I just know it's nice to have it. This comes down to a grounding idea that "Sentient beings should be happy". More of an opinion than anything. Maybe this revolves around the mysterious unknown called "consciousness"
- I don't know what a sufficiently sentient being is, and if sentience is on a sliding scale. A human is obviously sentient, but a virus or bacteria is not. Somewhere in between is a gray area. I also prioritize human happiness over animal happiness, but by how much is unknown.
- I prefer long-term happiness over short-term happiness, but by how much is unknown.
- I do not prefer involuntary sacrifice of individual happiness for collective happiness, under straightforward circumstances, but under extreme circumstances I might. Again, where to draw the line is unknown.
- Happiness is very subjective. How to judge or compare quantities and predict long-term versus short-term is unknown.
So my answer to "Why?" is "'happiness' with a myriad of caveats based on admitted lack of knowledge", and even 'happiness' is based on the unknown of what consciousness is. Paint a great big question mark on my forehead and call me an agnostic.
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February 27th, 2008
07:47 pm - Put down... the smiley...
 obscenely easy board
So I was terribly unmotivated to do anything, staring at the desktop, when I decided to break out Minesweeper. I mindlessly played a beginner-level game and won on my first try in 16 seconds.
That time sounded pretty good, so I tried to beat it. Dozens of games later, I still couldn't beat it. This was frustrating, because my score when I wasn't trying was consistently better than when I was trying.
Finally I got an obscenely easy board and won in 14 seconds. I'm putting the smilely down now... and posting about it because I'm that exciting of a person.
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February 20th, 2008
January 28th, 2008
10:08 pm - all data deletion
Actually it's just been made private to clean the journal of bad memories.
I hadn't written for the better part of a year.
If anyone really wants it, they can ask, or prove the futility of my actions with the internet's indelible memory.
This has not been my primary journal for some time, and will be used to communicate on LJ instead.
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September 5th, 2004
10:46 am - Livejournal Account
So I finally signed up for a Livejournal account. Not sure why I didn't do this sooner. I don't really intend to use it as a journal, but it will be very handy for commenting on my friend's pages, and also for learning how these sorts of systems work.
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arcadian83's journal