See Reason: Looking at the World through Science and Reason

It's generally useful to behave as if we all live in the same universe. Even if one agrees with quantum solipsism - the idea that one is the only person one knows exists and that the existence of the entire universe depends on you continuing to exist  - walking around acting that way makes you look crazy and you're sure to piss off everyone around you if they do in fact also exist. Life is a lot easier to live if one accepts the postulate that other people really do exist even if it can't be proven - and even if they don't exist, behaving as if they do keeps your experience of reality consistent with the expectations your mind has built up over years of experience before you started questioning the reality of other people. If one puts aside quantum solipsism, there is still a problem in knowing whether or not other people exist in the same universe as you or not. It turns out that one can only prove that other people's universe is consistent with your universe, an...

Eight years went by fast! Better late than never picking back up a blog I suppose. Since I last wrote (in addition to everyone driving home getting “Internet phones” to provide them real-time traffic data which should hypothetically lead to more efficient travel times) I’ve largely maintained most of the beliefs from my posts and developed my thinking along several lines. Today, I’m going to talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot recently: what will happen to society leading into and after the singularity? On one hand, the definition of the singularity is that we cannot see what the world will be like beyond its horizon, because we cannot predict what the presence of one or more intelligences far superior to our own would do with the world. However, we can project some of the current aspects of our society forward to the singularity and make some educated guesses about what will happen to them after the singularity as well. I’m going to first talk through the DM...

I'm trying to write about whatever I'm currently thinking about on this blog, but with the holiday, I've been mostly thinking about how relaxing it is to have some vacation. And, this Wednesday, I leave for San Francisco to visit Sanna's family (she's my girlfriend) and some friends. So, I want to make a post before I go, so that you don't think I've given up on this whole blog thing. Rather than talk about hanging out on the fourth, or politics or libertarianism or something else that's just gonna get me fired up and ruin the end of the weekend, I'm going to talk about what might be the most important thing in the world to me, outside of people: the singularity. The singularity is the name given to a broad collection of theories concerning the future development of technology and refers to the idea of a critical mass of technology beyond which lies an explosion in human intelligence and technological capabilities. The term was coined about 25 years...

Maybe 3 or 4 years ago, I started developing a fear of flying. I never had a problem before then, but for some reason I started getting scared, especially when there's turbulence . My mother says it's because I became an atheist, but I don't buy that, because I've been a closet atheist for a while, well before my fear of flying. I know that flying is extremely safe, safer than driving, but that doesn't comfort me. I think my fear comes from the fact that if there is a crash, I have about a 0% chance of survival. At least in a car crash, I have a shot at survival. On a plane, there is nothing I can do. You just go down, and that's it. But I have to fly, because it's the only practical way to travel long distances. I don't believe in any supernatural protectors, so I can't pray for safety or anything. So I need a way to get over my fear. It helps to have a couple drinks before getting on the plane, and sometimes that's enough, but usually, I get to...

One of the perks of working for Microsoft and living in Seattle is getting to sit in traffic for a couple hours a day (I'm working on something greener, honest). So, I have a lot of time to think. Often, my thoughts turn to why exactly there is so much traffic. (There is a lot of scholarly work on traffic, and you can write code to model different things, but I'm speaking from a more theoretical perspective). I take State Route 520 to and from work. There are no traffic lights, so on the surface, I thought traffic couldn't get too bad. I don't see much reason why the ratio of total trip time to the number of cars on the road shouldn't remain fairly constant or at least scale gracefully. But, it does not. At some point, there is enough traffic that you spend most of the time stopped, and getting home takes an hour plus, instead of 15 minutes. So, there must be other factors affecting traffic patterns besides the road itself. There are two important other factors: sur...

So, now that I've told you what this blog is, here's why I decided "yes, today is the day I join the blogosphere :" I just finished writing an email in response to one a relative sent that basically tried to say the Democrats made oil $130+ a barrel and gas $4+ a gallon by not letting us drill our land. I don't very much like Democrats, Republicans, or politicians in general, but I can't abide unproductive, unwarranted blaming of all our problems on any single villain . After reading an article on the great http://seekingalpha.com/ , I was inspired enough to write my response, which I thought was good enough I wanted to make it public in case some day someone else might read it and start thinking more rationally. Preface: I am convinced by the evidence of global warming (there is so much out there... do a Google scholar search if you don't like Wikipedia and aren't convinced), and do think we need to start reducing our impact on the environment. Howe...