LastThursday

@HMD you're right that there seems to be a general anti-thinking trend perpetuated by the internet. The thinking mind is the problem, but it can also be the solution, just look at what Leo does. @Lila9 is exactly right, in that a lot of thinking is just neurotic monkey mind so becoming aware of it and learning to shut it off sometimes, is beneficial. Quality thinking though is hard and most people don't do it because it's a real effort or they don't know how. It's far easier to fall back to opinion, arguing and emotions (e.g.) - some are even scared of good thinking.

It's interesting to look at the bigger picture and see that scapegoating is just one way to exercise power and control, also known as bullying. It's sad to see how devastating it can be to a young kid, but I'm glad you've managed to regain yourself, kudos.

On today's smorgasbord of YouTube delight it's the turn of science. A lot of the stuff I like to watch is mostly popular science, because it's the most digestible. Indeed, a lot of the ideas I've heard a million times already, but I still get something from each retelling, because some of the ideas are truly hard to grasp in their entirety and it's fun to get different angles on a thing. Anyway, for the meat... Arvin Ash covers lots of different aspects of science with a strong physics bias. He's clear and easy to understand and the animations are very well done The GOAT of science YouTube is Derek Muller, who covers all aspects of science with catchy animations, interviews and visits different institutions, great stuff Destin Sandlin covers science in general, but often with a more engineering focus. His slow motion videos and personal visits to different manufacturing facilities are excellent for seeing science in action Mahesh Shenoy has a smaller following and covers physics, but I find him enthusiastic and clear in his explanations and animations. Mithuna Yoganathan covers lots of ideas in physics with props and does her own experiments. She's very clear and measured in her delivery Jeroen Vleggaar covers lot's of ideas in physics specifically to do with light. He goes into in depth explanations, doing his own experiments and getting to the meat of "why". Excellent stuff. Jade Tan-Holmes covers lots of more popular side of maths and physics, with props and quirky animations. Clear and enthusiastic If you like to see the latest in science then Sabine Hossenfelder is your woman. She's a jobbing scientist so knows what she's talking about and often is no-nosense with a dry sense of humour. Steve Mould often has a quirky take on science making his own elaborate props and really trying to "do" science in its most pure sense, with his own ideas and deductions, good stuff Matt O'Dowd is also a jobbing scientist and similar to Arvin Ash covers lots of ideas in science, often with more of a space theme. Clear and understandable Dianna Cowern covered a large number of topics in science often going out into the field - until she came down with long term illness - hopefully she is able to return one day. Excellent stuff

The mind blowing thing is that Theory of Mind is also applied to yourself. Your emotions and actions are rationalised into a story about your own identity, and produces a "self" as a result.

Suffering is directly caused by identity. An identity is an actively self sustaining entity or system. It can be anything like a biological identity or mental identity. Any disruption to the identity causes suffering, which is an alarm signal to say it is under attack in some way. It's interesting to investigate whether something like a car has an identity. Once the ignition is triggered, then the engine and car systems sustain themselves. The car systems have to regulate themselves otherwise the car will stall. Often if those systems are not working correctly then you will get warning lights. In that sense the car "suffers". Or you might have an alarm system against theft, again the car "suffers" by sounding an alarm, if it is compromised in some way.

You're imagining you too. Or more like consciousness is imagining you and everything else. You're not separate from consciousness, you're within it. Realise the possibility that "you" could stop existing within consciousness. Otherwise, not much.

There's a lot of factors involved in success. Volume of work is one of those factors, but importantly not the only one. Here's a few others off the top of my head: Natural talent - people become successful doing the things that come easy naturally Consistency - even if the rate of work is low, over months and years it can become substantial Planning - having some sort of flexible road map can guide you in the right direction Goals, mission statements etc - knowing what you want in the end is good for success Environment - putting yourself in the right places at the right times is good for both motivation and meeting the right people Information - taking in the right information and cutting out the crap will increase success Motivation - learning how to motivate yourself well can be great for success I'd say you don't need all the above, but the more of those things you have the better. Maybe you're not the sort of person that has a high rate of work, but you have natural talent for something, so you should concentrate on that instead. It's also largely domain dependent, some things just simply require a lot of work to get any sort of traction.

On today's red carpet of YouTube celebrity is technology and gadgets old and new. I do like to keep up with technology and see where things are headed. From a young age I always enthralled by technology and the past forty years (and longer) has been an unending roller coaster of innovation, what a joy to be in the middle of it. And I do like a bit of history around this sort of thing too. For your everyday and household technology past and present, Alec Watson takes you through it all with some amount of entertaining wit and sarcasm. Very informative and rigorously researched nonetheless For more of an in depth foray into the history of consumer tech and more Matthew Taylor gives his opinons and overviews. There's stuff there that you didn't even know could exist Fran Blanche revives and and tears down interesting and obsolete tech, and explains how it all worked and sometimes philosophises about engineering in general. Love it. Anastasia N (last name unknown) covers the bleeding edge in semiconductor design, and is a chip designer herself. Very informative and fascinating stuff Dr Károly Zsolnai-Fehér (watch the videos for the pronunciation) covers the cutting edge of computer graphics and related subjects like AI. I like his enthusiasm, and support for the field I'm a real nerd about vintage computer tech and own a few pieces myself. David Murray resurects and covers many aspects of old computer tech, and sometimes forays into non-computer tech Adrian Black gets his oscilloscope and soldering iron out and fixes old computer kit and talks you through all the interesting detail. If I retired and only did this, I'd be a happy guy Christian Simpson covers all sorts of old computer tech and sometimes modern uses for them. Terrible puns and dry wit and a talking dog, very entertaining Neil Thomas loves old tech so much he created a museum in the Gloucestershire countryside. I must go. Lots of stuff about old gaming consoles, arcade games, and old computers, with a bit of history and interviews thrown in. Peter Leigh covers a lot history of computers, games and related things, in true Brit style

That cracked up so bad 🤣 Carry on... 🤣

Is a finger separate from a hand? A finger is just an arbitrary demarcation of the hand. The demarcation of the self is maintained by some mechanism, whatever that is (some sort of reflexive identity). But it seems like it's possible to change the extent of a Self or remove the demarcation altogether through meditation, drugs, sudden enlightenment and so on. So the self is real like a finger is real, for as long as it remains distinct, but its very definition is fluid. If a self can disappear, then it is not a truth.

I can recommend acting, good for self-expression, confidence and connecting with people. Although, I've only dabbled a bit. More conventionally, long distance running, good for overall fitness and mental and physical endurance. Volunteering in any capacity, good for building compassion and understanding and for a sense of accomplishment. Learning to play any musical instrument, good for coordination and dexterity, and learning patience and mastery.

Not much different from real life, people come and go, and sometimes they come back or they shapeshift (ahem multiple accounts ahem).

Normal service will be resumed shortly. But until then I continue my tour of YouTube channels I watch regularly. Today's genre is sort of self help, introspection, philosophy on living, those sorts of things. Alain De Botton, in his own right a philosopher and author, narrates animated videos on all aspects of the philsophy of being human, great and insightful stuff Tom van der Linden often covers the philosphy of how to live, but through the medium of film, and it's a powerful approach. Incredibly well thought out and composited videos have you tugging at your heart strings Lana Blakely is a Swedish YouTuber who covers the many facets of how to live life, and has the wisdom to back it up If you want cinematic videos and an exposition on just being alive then Nathaniel Drew takes you through his life abroad Matt D'Avella is more on the self help and productivity side of things, he's always entertaining to watch and I always come away feeling that I should try the things he's advocating

YouTube is of course incestuous, or is that promiscuous? I don't know what I'm talking about. Here's the reaction to the reaction lol ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In today's suite of YouTube videos is the outdoor category. I do relish a good hike in the countryside, and very rare spot of camping. I'm not sure where my love of walking comes from, no-one else in my family is interested in that sort of thing. I kind of just started one day some time in my twenties and never looked back. However, I do like exploring new places and like the freedom and tranquility of it. Claire Conybeare (I think that's her last name!) does all sorts of camping expeditions by herself in the British countryside, with a little bit of a breakdown of her equipment, well shot and narrated, and a quirky sense of humour Steve Wallis's shtick is stealth camping, and he's camped in some questionable places only once getting caught. Good entertainment Tom Davies best known as GeoWizard occasionally does crazy stuff in the British countryside, or in more urban locations - apart from his more usual GeoGuessr videos, again very entertaining Paul Whitewick is newer to me, he does mostly historical stuff and walks the British countryside, and I always learn something interesting Isabel Page recounts stories about her life in the woods and being self-sufficient, incredibly well shot and narrated. I always feel so peaceful after these videos! More incredibly shot videos and stories from Jonna Jinton who lives in the icy wilds of the north of Sweden.

You didn't mention absolute infinity, you just said infinity. If that's your definition, then by definition it includes everything. But how do you know we're in an absolute infinity. What is your logic? Or is it faith?

It doesn't follow that infinity contains everything possible. For example take all the numbers from 1 to infinity. Take out the number 3. You're still left with an infinity of numbers, there's just no three. In fact you could take out an infinity of numbers and still be left with infinity, for example take out all the odd numbers.

No list today. But in a case of YouTube synchronicity, this came out an hour ago. Surely they're reading my journal? Sabrina Cruz, Melissa Fernandes and Taha Khan answer all the questions you've often wondered about but never thought you'd get the answer to, love the channel (if you reading this...)

Can you tell I'm on the optimistic side of things? I don't deny your domain knowledge hopefully you'll be part of the future of AI going in the "right" direction. I know by exponential I really mean the S-shaped curve, it's not exponential forever. I just don't believe that in a lot of areas the ceiling of AI has been reached yet, it really is early days. Some ceilings might be power consumption, transistor density and availability of data, but ingenuity knows no bounds and some of these blocks will be bypassed one way or another. Shifts and paradigms have an uncanny ability to "come out of nowhere", the transformer architecture being exactly one of those shifts. What it might take is something akin to Turing with his ideas on what a computation is, instead we need ideas on what reasoning is and how to model that successfully - something way beyond propositional logic say. We want AI to actually understand (reason about) what it is doing, i.e. self reflection and context awareness.

Don't forget AI research has been going on since the 1960's. Seven years is no time in the scheme of things, another big innovation will come along soon enough, maybe even helped by AI itself. The fact that there are dedicated GPU's coming onto the market, shows that optimisation for AI has already started, it's not the end of the process. The whole pipeline for AI will be optimised in hardware in time and reduction in power consumption will be part of the mix. Perhaps not, but new paradigms come along. In the end AI will seek and suck in it's own data autonomously. Most likely with embodied AI. In any case, in the end widespread usage and a large ecosystem of smaller AI's are going to have more impact than single monolithic AI's. The usage of AI in all its forms is still increasing exponentially and hasn't reached saturation.

What? I didn't say nuffink. Move along, nothing to see here 😈

There's less difference between a character in a novel or your imagination and your real friend X than you think. The common thread is that they're all constructions in your mind and imagination. Theory of Mind breathes life into your mental constructions. In fact some people do this sort of thing on purpose and create Tulpas which are "materialised thought forms". Are any of these constructions conscious? Some say no, for example philosphical zombies. I say yes, because you yourself are conscious. Your consciousness is their consciousness. Although don't confuse it with solipsism (uh oh), consciousness doesn't belong to you.

No no. AI still has a lot of exponential growth. The bottleneck of power consumption will be solved in time by dedicated silicon, it's already happening. And AI will get deployed into everything and that's only going to carry on accelerating. The problem of data for training AI is real, there's only a finite supply of it, but that only applies to the top of the range cutting edge AI. Lesser AI will just not need that quantity of training data. Also, new more effective techniques will come along for training AI, so more will be squeezed from the data we do have. I don't believe synthetic data will fix the supply problems though.

Is there no end to my YouTube odyssey? Today up, artchitecture and construction. I was a dab hand at technical drawing at school, and I think I would have made a good architect, although it's an underdeveloped muscle. And, some of my best times have been building big things out of wood and power tools, albeit rarely. There's definitely something latent there... For your current massive infrastructure projects around the world, Fred Mills takes you through the ins and outs of how these places and structures get built, super interesting and highly polished videos Dami Lee is an architect who covers more the psychology and design behind buildings and speculates on different ways of living, some interesting angles there If you want a hands on look at how large habitations are made in all aspects then Paul Marshall takes you through it, some projects he does nearly completely by himself - astonishing The minimalist in me somehow can't get enough of the idea of tiny homes, could I live in one or even make my own...? Bryce Langston visits them on your behalf Kirstin Dirksen let's the people do the talking, and visits a huge range of different and quirky dwellings to get a real feel for how differently people live Brooke Whipple builds her own huts and and out of the way viviendas (her partner also has a construction channel) and generally explores the outdoor life:

Decaf all the way. I worked out a long time ago that I'm intolerant to caffeine, or at least my body doesn't break it down very quickly. I get sweatiness, lightheadedness and problems sleeping. The genetics of it is interesting with potentially two mutant genes involved. I very much avoid Coke and Red Bull type drinks, and dark chocolate later in the day, green tea too. If I fancy a buzz, then I'll take a non-decaf strong coffee very first thing, but I always regret it and it's not a great drug for me. Although, I can build up a certain amount of tolerance, but still not great. The only concerns I have with decaf are the method of decaffeination: Swiss Water Process or chemical solvents. The Swiss one is probably safer for the body, but you'll never know which process has been used especially in coffee shops. The other is flavour, it's just not as strong tasting as conventional coffee, and even if it's a darker roast it still missing that "coffee" flavour. You get used to it though. The main benefit for me is being able to sleep properly. Despite my intolerance I never feel agitated or anxious on caffeine or that it does anything for my concentration.

I always did enjoy stories of ancient civilisations. I got given a big fat book of the history of the world when I was a kid and I was captivated by it, in fact I still have the book (thanks Mum). The quintessential ancient civilisation is ancient Egypt, with it's deep history and superb monuments. It's only when you go in person and see the great pyramids for yourself do you realise the immensity of it, it truly boggles the mind, it certainly did me. And then you realise that something else was going on there outside the mainstream view of history. And believe me, I'm the last person to be a conspiracy theorist. The following videos mostly go into that side of ancient history and are mostly about Egypt, but with other sites around the world too. Ben van Kerkwyk does a great job digging into the mysteries of ancient Egypt, he clearly believes in a history of high technology (convincingly), so bear that in mind Douglas Rennie discuss in more of a documentary format his ideas on all things Egypt, sensible and level headed Matt Sibson discusses his own ideas about ancient sites, mostly Egypt, but other places too and has a slightly more academic bent David Miano is an academic, and his no-nonsense approach is refreshing - often (and reasonably) debunking other channels. He covers lots of ancient history and sites, and also visits them in person, great stuff Jahannah James is more speculative and admittedly a bit woo at times, but she's enthusiastic and has good ideas, she also has a side line as an actor (or is that the other way round?) Tina Wan covers a lot of ancient history mysteries, and expounds on her theories about them. Alternative, but reasonable sounding Thomas Rowsell is well researched and no-nonsense at times, occasionally going out into the field and covers lots of mostly European pre-history And for very ancient (pre-historic) history Stefan Milosavljevich is your man. His humour and enthusiasm shine through, mostly genetics and studies of ancient humans, and more of an academic