Spring cleaning

I had far too much stuff on my laptop. I'm sure I still do. I just reimaged because lappy had a fatal... uhmmm... something yesterday. I almost started to go on an installing rampage. But then I chillaxed.

I don't need that much stuff.

Firefox (with 2 extensions and some chrome editing for the look and vertical tabs)
Skype (with Twype to get twitter updates via skype)
Taskbar shuffle (because it's awesome)
Launchy (because it's awesomer)
Notepad++ (because it's not terrible like notepad)
Zulupad (because there's this one file I need for my OSS)
VLC (video and music)
PrimoPDF (pdf printer)

To be fair, the computer comes with office and photoshop and matlab and lyx. So maybe I'm not exactly a minimalistic user, but my start menu is now a single column instead of three so I'm gonna consider it significant. To be fairer still, I will be backing that up with portable apps that let me get isos, burn discs, rar things etc. etc. I wonder how long it'll last?

On responsibility for actions

I know that a lot of my philosophical babble is just that - babble. And a lot of the rest is common sense. Well, today we will be more or less in the common sense category.

There are lots of levels of responsibility for actions. For a long time, I've valued honor (in the old-fashioned sense) and believed that one should always accept responsibility for their actions.

But I think I can do much better.

Sometimes, I do better and claim responsibility for my actions. This is better in that responsibility is taken for an action without needing someone to effectively call you on it.

Now here's the common sense part. Why is it better to claim responsibility for an action than to accept it? Because it's earlier and more considered.

That can be expanded easily. One could take responsibility while doing an action. Or even further - one could be responsible for a decision to act.

I think people claim (myself included) that they're responsible for their actions when they are not. In point of fact, most people tend to (at best) accept their actions post-facto. It seems rather obvious and common-sensical - banal even - but I've got a lot of work to look forward to if I'm serious about being responsible.

It boils down to the difference between these:

• Yeah. You're right. My decision to continue got him killed.
• I'm sorry. He got killed because of my decision to continue.
• My decision to keep going could get somebody killed.
• Given the possibility of someone getting killed if I choose to continue, I believe we should keep going.

I have a long ways to go.

Organization

So I was organizing a bunch of papers I have and added categories to the whole thing.

I'm rather amused at how I function nowadays and thought I'd share. For each paper I have something in a text file like this:

Minch99
-Reconfigurable Translinear Analog Signal Processing
-21
-For OSS
-Talks about MITEs and actually implements log-domain filters with them
>TL, FILT

This is the file name, title, page count, original purpose, summary and categories.

The part I find amusing is that it would take me probably less than 5 minutes to make a python script that can pull things out by a variety of factors. It would take me like 20 minutes to make an appropriate database and an AJAXy setup for looking through it. I like that I naturally set things up in a way that makes it easy to port like that. I'm also amused that I choose to just scroll through my text file. Oh well.

On the unforgivable

There are some mistakes that are easy to get past, but what happens when one makes a mistake that violates a principle that they consider important?

Sometimes, an action is unforgivable. If the another person makes this kind of mistake, it is possible to either let it sit or to be merciful and forgive the person. But this can't be easily done for oneself. If you forgive the unforgivable in yourself, it feels like you are changing your principles. It doesn't feel like mercy, it feels like failure. So how do you get past a mistake that matters?

The only answer I've been able to come up with is time. Just let it sit. It fades in memory. It becomes less important.

Maybe there's some rational way to say something like "I've acted 10 billion times and only 6 of these times were unforgivable mistakes, so this is a reasonable proportion." But my mind cannot work that way. For me, unforgivable is not forgivable. The interesting thing, from reading what I wrote above, is that I seem to think that the person who did something unforgivable can be forgiven, but the action itself cannot. That makes sense.

Any thoughts?

Quietness Experiment

Some of you might have noticed a period starting two weekends ago and going through about last Tuesday where I was substantially quieter than usual. I was trying a bit of an experiment to see if I could be both quiet and passive as opposed to loud and borderline aggressive. It was hard, but also quite eye-opening.

I started on a Friday evening and pretty much just failed. I would just be frustrated for a while as I actively tried anything in order not to talk and then I'd eventually let my guard down for a second (usually because my willpower was being drained at incredible speeds) and I'd be back at full volume imposing my views on as many people as humanly possible. Not great. Also, I got sweet headaches from the failed effort of trying to be quiet.

This would be that pattern for a few days. Eventually, with a great deal of self-programming (mostly by a hybrid meditation/self-hypnosis thing I've had going since high school) and force of will, my volume decreased. I started listening to what others had to say. Mostly, I tended to agree with what loud-Boris would've had to say on the subject, but I simply didn't say it. Sometimes, I found myself noticing that there was more thought behind some of the things others said than I would normally see (as they would've been interrupted before it became evident). I found myself enjoying being quiet sometimes. It started being classified as a default state. I met a friend's girlfriend and was introduced as "This is Boris. He used to be loud, but... uhmmm... now he's not... anyways, he's a good kid." Another friend told me that my default volume was not only lower than my old volume, but actually lower than the average person's default volume. I was feeling pretty proud.

In addition to the volume thing, I was also doing the passive thing. This meant lots of things. For example, I had to wait at the dinner table until someone left in order to leave instead of causing an exodus myself. Something I found rather amusing was that many groups had very solidified roles for people. Any group that relied on me to start conversations had incredibly funny awkward silences. To the point where one group spent most of a conversation talking about how they wished the other loud person in the group was there so that they'd have something to talk about. It was hilarious. Oh. And frustrating. Did I mention that? Anyways, this went on for a while and I was debating keeping it. Ultimately, the goal was to reach a state where both my volume and my level of assertiveness were things I could dynamically modify. But until then, I'd need a default. I was actually considering making it quietness. I wasn't going to do passive, but I though I might go for assertive and quiet.

But then I decided to go back to a loud default. Why, you ask? Well, I seem to be unable to separate out the assertion from the volume easily. I started being really unhappy with myself when I'd occasionally decide to say something and then never say it because I wouldn't interrupt anyone. By the time a hole in the conversation popped up... well - it just wasn't relevant anymore. So I'm back to old, loud Boris.

*sigh*

Maybe I'll try separating out assertiveness and volume again sometime soon. It seems like a prerequisite for the end goal of having full, real-time control of both of these variables independently.

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On an entirely different note, I've had a headache since I got home. I think it's because of a lack of pressure. It's kind of hilarious really.

Shorthand and the Major Memory System

So I ended up dredging up a couple of old pals today. In the past, I've learned a couple of forms of shorthand (Speed-Writing and Teeline) and I'd read about (and tried) a variety of memory systems. These have all been entertaining for a while and then been left by the roadside, but it has not been a waste.

I still remember Teeline just fine and occasionally use it to jot things that I'd rather not have others read or simply because I don't have room in a margin to write things out longhand. I'm certainly not faster at Teeline than normal writing anymore. (pdf of the Teeline system)

The Major System (wiki) is an infinitely generalizable peg memory system. The idea is that you link whatever you want to remember with a particular image that represents an index. The neat thing about this system is that each digit is represented by a consonant sound. For example, a 1 is a d or t sound. So my index for 1 is 'toe' and my index for 11 is 'dead.' If I want remember a list of scientific discoveries, for example (Times top ten list), where #1 is a method for making skin cells behave like embryonic stem cells - I could picture some skin from a toe being scraped off and grown into various organs.

Now here's my favorite part. Teeline uses only consonants. The Major system makes everything a consonant. I think they like each other. It certainly helps add an additional few elements of memory (I can remember writing out and seeing the Teeline symbol). More importantly, it got me excited. Time to relearn both. Maybe this time I'll stick with the major system. It is conceptually incredibly powerful. If anyone wants to practice either at Olin, let me know.

Brain Fodder from Confucius

Hey all. I've been reading some Confucian writings and I thought I'd share some thoughts I found particularly interesting. I do suggest reading them. Stopping and thinking about these can be quite rewarding.

• Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
• Have no friends not equal to yourself.
• When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.
• The accomplished scholar is not a utensil.
• To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.
• The mind of the superior man (Chun-Tsze) is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain.
• Chi Wan thought thrice, and then acted. When the Master was informed of it, he said, "Twice may do."