Shadowlessness

Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone…

…And no justice for all, because a bunch of petty, raisin-brained dictator-wannabes wanna be dictators. And frak them all.

Frak these stupid idiots. They deserve to be ruled by an even bigger idiot. I call them idiots, because in my book, that’s almost the worst insult.
In any case, if Iranians indeed have voted for that arsehole, then we deserve him and nothing more. I’m pretty sure that I am unable to partake how angry I am. I have no words to describe what I feel properly. Right now, there is an army of Kratoses roaring and bellowing with rage, tearing flesh, breaking bone, burning everything and raining a maelstrom of blood.

Frak. Frak. Frak. Frak me sideways.

I, like most of us in these days that we are nearing the presidential election, think a lot about the situation of our country and our pale blue dot.

I, like most of us, am worried about where we are headed. I, like most of us, am skeptical about the election results and whether it’ll have a real impact for the better. I don’t think anyone has any doubts about whether the times can get worse, because they sure can, as the past four years have shown. But for the better? I don’t know.

However, like many stupid young people, I have my hopes. I hope for for a more realistic government. One that is more in line with what the people want and need. You know what? I want a less stupid government. One that does not tell so many lies that even its own body starts believing them.

I hope for less religious mumbo jumbo and more information and wisdom. I want a government that works efficiently and knowledgeably and let’s people do whatever they want as long as they don’t break the law. And I want real, realistic and usable means to change the laws if they are broken and bad.

I want freedom. I want a government that is afraid of its people, not a people that are afraid of their government even when they are in their own bed. Even worse, I don’t want a people that don’t care about their government as long as it doesn’t step on their toes and vice versa.

I want people to listen to each other. I want people not to turn their head and pretend that they just don’t see. I don’t want the stupid idiots who decide my fate to still think that what is said in some book from several hundred years ago is absolute truth, no matter how strange, immoral, improbable, unacceptable, malicious and unscientific it is.

I don’t want my government officials to say that they do their job because some god says so in some book, or because it’s their religious obligation, or because some guy who died 1300 years ago is quoted to have wanted so.

I want them to do their job because the law says so, or because it’s their moral, social or logical obligation, or because the people want so.

I want some information. I am sick and tired of being treated like an idiot. I want freedom of the press and media. I know it’s got its own bag of problems, but hey, that’s much better than what we got already: all the problems of a media-driven and media-blinded society and 2% the functionality.

I want science and knowledge to have real value, not just as things to do in university as a way to pimp up your resumé to get the hell out of this dismal country. I want the wheels of industry, commerce, trade and technology to start turning and to move this country forward.

I want an education system that instead of force feeding children with crap and filling their heads with superstition and guilt and unreal notions of hope and salvation, teaches them to think and choose and provide them with data to support their choice. I want our schools to be playgrounds for the real world out there, not 11 years (or 12 or whatever the number currently is) of isolation from reality and Newspeak practice. I don’t want teenagers to learn more from ditching school than attending.

I want people to panic! I don’t want us to go about our lives like sheep the night before they are slaughtered, or like the anecdotal frog that never jumps out of the water that is slowly starting to boil. Our situation is very dire. I want to see people start screaming out of their windows that they are “mad as hell” and that they are “not going to take it anymore.” Why no one does that, unless it’s election time and they are one of the candidates and preferably there are more than three million watching?

On days like these, why it is that I find the immortal songs of Mr. Bob Dylan to be the ones that speak most loudly my heart and mind?

Do times ever change? Am I a fool to hope? Am I a simpleton to be knocking on heavens door? In days like these, I feel like my hopes, and most people’s, are blowing in the wind.

I am not full of music. I used to think that I was, but I realize my folly now. I used to think that, that I am full of music and that I only lacked the means of expression. I used to think that I was full of ideas, full of images, full of love, full of compassion, full of emotion, ready to be bestowed at the world. That I was warm and understanding; ready to be given at whomever asked.
But I’m empty. I am devoid of music, without love and out of compassion. I am empty. I have no emotion that a Hollywood movie cannot express ten-fold. I am empty of love that a rural anecdote can portrait. I am out of love. I am devoid of love. I am empty. I am without art. I used to think that I have art in computers, but that’s only in absence of real expertise. I am empty. I am hollow. I am a hollow shell. I want to curl up on the side of a seldom-trodden path and die.
No candle burns for me. No shrine will be erected in my name. I am empty. I am empty. I am drained.
“I’m deranged.” There is no funny thing here. No secrets, and no energy. Just an empty, hollow shell, devoid of everything that is good.
People might disagree, but people don’t know about the darkness and pain that is in my heart. I am empty, hollow, devoid and mediocre. I let down values that I must uphold and preach with my actions those that I must devalue. I am empty.

I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories. I don’t think the world is ruled in secret by the Illuminati or a group of lizard-descendants from outer space, or the mice. I can’t believe that if there is such a deep and wide-reaching conspiracy involving undoubtedly millions of people, no proof of it would ever leak out. I can’t believe that there exist such complex machinery and plot as to rule the world seemingly in perfect chaos, but all the while leading according to a singular design.
I firmly believe that the world is as frakked up as it is on its own; and we create all this chaos on our own. We don’t need vampires or the said lizards to be in charge behind the scenes to pollute, pillage, destroy, kill and harm. We are quite capable in that regard.
And my proof is that a bunch of humans slowly annihilating themselves and everything that is good is a much simpler explanation than the “300 Committee.”

But that’s not what I intended to write about.

I also don’t believe in smaller conspiracies. I don’t believe that all the elections in the world are fixed. I don’t believe that the NSA monitors everything on the Internet (they do, but they have no reason to care for my data, and I’m taking all the measures that I logically can, so if they really can break AES, well, there’s not much more I can do!) I don’t believe that the bank tellers are all my enemies. I also don’t believe that the Azad university teachers are forced to flunk students, so they have to pay the tuition multiple times. And so on and so forth.

Let’s get back to that election thing.

It’s getting near the presidential election here in Iran. And as always, people are all filled with false hope or with empirical pessimism. Many (most) of the people, specially the educated, believe that the election results are predetermined and fixed. They believe that no matter what their vote, the desirable candidate for the “powers to be” comes out of the ballot boxes. Other believe that the general, stupid public will vote for the worst of the worst and the worst of the worst will be president again.
Many people, smart people, people starving for change, people hungry for freedom, people who should know better don’t vote. Sometimes they don’t vote for even more stupid reasons; e.g. that their perfect candidate is not running for presidency or because all those who are running are bad.

I hereby ask the conspiracy theorists to think about it a little more. I’m not saying that a few hundred ballots here and a few thousands votes there are not bought, sold, exchanged, inserted, deleted or corrected! That’s human nature. But I don’t think that actually has any significant influence on the results. When you can coerce millions of people to vote for you with a ripped coat, a stupid smile and a promise to bring the oil money to their tables, why would you need a nationwide conspiracy to pad the ballots or fix the election or con the counting process?! Don’t you think the former’s much cheaper, more effective and less prosecutable (in this country, at least)?

I would ask the pouters to stop pouting and come and eat their dinner! I know the candidate selection and screening process in Iran is retarded and ridiculous. But one of these candidates is going to be elected your next president whether you vote or not. In any given group of candidates, there must be bad and worse. Go and vote for the least bad so the next president (hopefully) does the least amount of damage. Even bad is better than the possibility of worse. The only logical reason you might have for not picking a candidate in this case is if you genuinely believe that you are actually more likely to pick the worse! If you think you are worse than the average idiot who walks this country at picking the better (or least bad) among 5-6 guys for presidency, then you should not vote. But who really believes that?!
(Of course, I wish more people did, but as some very smart guy has said, the problem with the world is that wise people are always full of doubt but the idiots never have any! I’m sure that those who actually believe the above are almost definitely the ones that are way more qualified that the average populace to vote.)
In short, you have to vote even if you don’t like any of the candidates or the one you liked best is not among them.

The logical pessimists are the hardest to deal with logically. It is painfully obvious that the vote of one person has absolutely no significant significance in the result of the election. And any rational person should know this and would know this. However, if all the rational, logical and sane people sanctioned (or embargoed or whatever) the election it is obvious that all the voters will be the irrational, the illogical and the insane! It’s called “super-rationality” people! Look it up!

I’m always a positive person and I always think positive. I firmly believe that today can never be as bad as tomorrow and this year cannot compete with the next in sucking. Therefore, we have every reason to be happy and cherish every moment of our lives.
To misuse the famous lyrics, “Carpe diem, baby!”

We have all tasted that feeling… when you’re alone and you’re cold inside; when the world is frakking you up left and right; when life is just one tortured moment after another; when people you love don’t love you back; when things you want just slip out of your hands; when each breath comes only as an obligation; when you’re full of despair, not just for yourself, but for the human kind and this tiny planet; when blood and fire and war and hate is all that goes around and comes around; when days are dark and nights are stifling; when ice is the only remnant of justice and nothing remains of fair; when happy endings are only in stories like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet…
The human condition is so full of pain and misery that it’s almost ridiculous that people still hold on to hope.
The interesting feature about everybody’s darkness and despair is that they think it’s their pain and theirs alone and they alone have to bear this unbelievably unbearable burden of excruciation exasperation. Take a good look around you, people! Everybody has problems! Everybody is in pain all the time, except those who are too stupid or too wise to be reigned by it.
Anyways, when you think about it, you realize that there’s nothing special about your pain, and you are just like everyone else. We are all on a Gaussian bell curve of misery and heartache and those out of the 6-sigma domain are far too busy with either joy or misery to notice where they are.
When you think about it, none of us are unique in our sadness and despair. In fact, hardly any of us are unique in any meaningful way, least of all in our thinking. The saddest part of the human existence, the way I see it, is the 500 channels of the same shit on the TV, the loads of crap on the Internet, the tons of dung in the cinema, music and books. It’s mediocrity that is our biggest misery. It’s the 7 billion soulless bodies on this planet, all either trying to feed themselves, or trying to kill each other or (the saddest of them all) trying to look and act like each other.
So don’t be sad you puny worm-food bodies, and don’t be happy. You may think that your burden is the size of a mountain but it’s not. You are just another worthless droplet in this putrid sea of mediocrity. Smoke that in a pipe!

I’ve been rambling on for more than 420 words, and while I’m sure there is a point to be made, I don’t think I’ll be the one to make it tonight.

My outspoken (and certainly prejudiced and groundless) stance on AI is very well known where I am known myself. I hate the current trends and implementations of what is called Artificial Intelligence.
And what’s with the “artificial” prefix anyway? What is “real intelligence”? Why we call human (organic? carbon-based?) intelligence “real” and silicon-based (germanium-based?!) intelligence “artificial”? Because we where here first? Because we are currently more complex and have the upper hand? Wait for the “Singularity” (definitely STFW) and see who gets the last laugh, folks! I guarantee that it will be soon and it won’t be us (almost by definition!)
It can’t be because our intelligence is emergent and evolution-based and computer intelligence is designed and creation-based, because it is not! As far as I know (which is admittedly not far) most successful and state-of-the-art “intelligent” software are evolution-based these days. (They are based on that singly most unique and most elegant idea Darwin had one summer evening (or one winter morning, or whatever) which so beautifully explains a significant portion of the mess that we call “life”.)
And to attack the issue from another angle, “What is real? How do you define real?” What makes you think that we are any more real than the data structures and code run everyday on our own computers?
And don’t even get me started on the “gods-created-us-therefore-we-are-super-special” bullshit.

In any case, my point is that whatever this intelligence is, it’s no more artificial than our own, and we are probably no more real than it.
Maybe we should call it Third Intelligence? Obviously, calling machine intelligence Second Intelligence would be wrong, because they are third after mice and dolphins. We are fourth at best! “So long and thanks for all the fish” anyone?

Let me quote a great quote from a (supposedly) great person:

The question of whether computers can think is no more relevant than the question of whether submarines can swim.

Obviously, there must be a reason that I’m writing philosophically about AI at 6:28 in the morning. I have just started reading “The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect” (a seemingly great sci-fi book, available freely online) which apparently deals with the Singularity and the post-Singularity world. I’m in the middle of chapter two (out of eight) and I must say that the opening chapter was refreshingly original for me and sweetly violent. I recommend it even if the remaining 6.5 chapters are total crap.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Bernard Shaw said that. If you are a religious person and you are happy, well… good for you. But you have traded reality for happiness and peace, which makes you like an ostrich.

You will not become a better person with the turn of the year. You will not suddenly become more lucky, more handsome or more successful. Your life will not suddenly and magically flip over for the better. Your family will not become the ideal family. Your investments won’t start paying off the moment the year number increments. Your gods won’t like you better just because its a new year and you really really want it. People won’t all of a sudden start liking and respecting you in the Spring. Your significant other will not take an interest in you all anew. The world will not become nirvana, paradise, shangri-la, concordia, hyperboria, utopia, Silicon Valley or whatever other sort of heaven you believe in.

It will be the same shit, only a different day. Get over it already, because statistically, the day after that will yet be worse and the day after that even worse still.

Amiross has posted a few lists of stuff that every programmer/engineer should read or know about. In the list of papers, I had only read one before (to my shame and dishonor!) which incidentally is an old favorite of mine, or more like a holy writ: Ken Thompson‘s Reflections on Trusting Trust. Apparently, this speech is considered a classic work about computer security (the guy is seriously concerned about computer security in 1983, and guess what, 20 years later it became a day-to-day worry for everybody!) but that’s not what captivates me about this.
When I read it back in the day and when I read it now, I see a programmer. I real programmer. I see the heart, the soul and the attitude of a great hacker, a programmer and A Wise Man.
People don’t see programming as an art. Hell, even us programmers don’t treat it as an art and a lifestyle. “But there was a time” and there were people who realized that programming is more than merely a hobby or a job; it’s a life.
And what do we do? The best of us are either doing boring (but seemingly ground-breaking) stuff in boring research labs day and night, or writing ugly, bloated, “designed” and “architectured” code in badly-lit rooms day and night.
What are we? We used to be real Jedis and real Ninjas and now we are just commercialized Hollywood versions. What happened to us? “Where did we go yesterday?”

I am sometimes, rarely, full of energy and activity and hope. I want to change the world (small parts of it anyway) and I feel I just might be able to. Most of the time, I do absolutely nothing of any value to anyone, including myself, and I don’t want to. If I were a woman, I could blame my mood swings on menstruation cycles and hormone imbalances. But I’m not, and I can’t.
On the other hand, I can explain my very being (including the said mood swings and irregularities, spikes and valleys in my activities) well enough with one word: laziness. I should probably add that there is a lot of fear hiding behind the laziness as well, but that’s not what I would want to talk about.
However, my laziness should be apparent to anyone who even remotely knows me. You might think that, since I know about the laziness problem, and because I’m honest and courageous enough to admit it to myself and to the world, I’m two steps ahead in the race to resolve it, but you’d be tragically wrong.
This “admission” is merely another subtle and devious ploy by my lazy ass to continue my sloth-like existence. You see, by declaring to the world that I’m a lazy idiot, I’ll have the upper hand in any future moral battle with my conscience (and with other people) and will be able to hide behind this public declaration and say “See? I have a problem and I’m admitting to it. What else do you want from me?! You should have done your research into my personality before you trusted me!” which is a horrible but typical thing to say, for people at my level of laziness.
But this plot will no longer work now, would it?! Now that everyone is in on its every little dirty secret corner, I wouldn’t be able to take refuge in its cozy depths, would I?!
In any case, it’s a terrible situation being trapped in the same person as the worst “laziness” of the world and all the I/O being controlled by that laziness; all the sensors, affectors, everything. Or maybe an even more terrible thing is believing that “you” can never break out of the laziness prison.
Maybe even far more terrible is being lazy and making all kinds of mental excuses, like believing that you can do nothing about it, in order not to actually do anything about it.
Gods, someone put me out of my misery.

“You should never trust me,” said the second person.
“So I should sometimes trust you?” answered back the first person, after a while.
“Very good!” exclaimed the second person. “You are a quick study…”
The first person cut in. “But why should I trust you more than I trust anyone else then?”
“You don’t have to.” came back the prepared answer. “You should never trust me.”