Learning for Joy vs Utility

For a little while, maybe the least few years, life has been really good. But, at the same time, it's been incredibly boring. Sure, I have done some amazing things, got a brilliant house, work part time in a nice job, moved in with my partner, got a cat, getting a dog, have a pool, life is good. But something was lost. Connection, learning, philosophizing. 

When I was a teenager I used to write an online journal at thefurryforum.com and I used to write many things in it, my life, my philosophies, my projects. Random thoughts I had, mathey stuff, mathey questions. I wanted to do that again so I did a few attempts, I attempted to write it here, I attempted to write it on Twitter, but none of it really stuck. The reason I think is because I didn't write this stuff for me really, I wrote it with the expectation that someone would comment on it or find it interesting. What I'm learning, is that through reading meditations, sometimes it is good to create a catalog of things,  stream of consciousness style, just for me.

So this blog is now gonna be used for updates, weekly I'm hoping, about things I'm thinking about. And because we're talking about it I guess this post will be about exercising the mind.

Learning to me is the greatest past time someone can do. It feels good to learn, it feels good to know more things, I've always loved learning. But I've come to realize there are two types of learning, learning for joy and learning for utility. Learning for joy is the learning I love, learning things for the sake of simply knowing them, without any action or consequence necessary. Learning for utility is the learning I dislike, because it is more a means to an end, the end being what I want to do, it becomes a chore.

For example, when I learn about some networking concept in order to do my job at Google, I dislike this aspect of learning. Is it because I dislike the actual topic? Networking to me doesn't seem so bad, it is interesting. I find it really interesting how a completely decentralized system works, how routes are discovered in a way that has no global management system, it's actually very impressive. And still I find the concept of the internet sort of mind boggling, and I do find it interesting. Yet learning about the internet in relation to work is not interesting to me in the slightest. Why is that?

Perhaps it is impatience or rather distraction. I learn networking for work because I want to do a task, whether that's implement some new feature or learn more about the service that I'm running. So when I am learning the concept I always have it in my back of the mind how this concept relates to the task, and what I need to do for the task. Learning is a complicated road, you need to swurve and swivvle to your goal, it isn't a straight line, but I'm impatient. I want to complete the task quickly, so I don't take the road where it goes, I try to create my own road. Instead of learning where learning takes me, I force myself to learn only that which allows me to do the task. This defeats the curiosity, ends the adventure, and makes learning just a tool.

But why the impatience? Is it because if I'm learning to achieve the task there exists stress. I have to achieve the task in a given time, with a certain expectation given upon me, and so I need to learn quickly. And that stress, learning quickly, it makes a chore of a game. If you had to clean the floors, it might be a relaxing and nice thing to do, where you can clean the floors little by little while listening to music. But if you had to clean the floor with the expectation of someone else, then it becomes something else, it becomes a chore, it becomes an expectation, and that makes it harder to have fun doing. But no that is not the reason, because even learning to achieve a personal project is still something I dislike.

I think for learning for a personal project, the annoyance comes because I am so eager at the result. I want to achieve some awesome goal but learning takes a long time. I want to animate something but learning to animate takes years and I'm impatient, I don't want to wait years to animate my dreams, but I have to. Learning no longer becomes the point, it becomes the obstacle, maybe that's it. Learning for utility the goal is behind the learning, you have to get through the learning to get to where you want. But learning for joy, the goal IS learning, you are already there. I think that's what it is.

So maybe if I want to get better at learning for utility, I need to see the learning as the goal with no direct end result in mind. This is harder then it sounds. But maybe for drawing that's what I should do. Learning to draw should be fun because I''m learning a new skill, maybe I will never end up drawing and instead will do 3D animating or something. But learning to draw can still be good, it is learning. I should draw more.

I'm going to commit to write blogs more in this pose, just to myself, maybe link people when I want. Give deeper insight. The goal not for public consumption, but for the act of writing itself. Just like learning.

My Old Poetry

 So I was browsing some forums I used to visit and discovered a bunch of my old poetry, so here it is, for you to enjoy if you'd like!

Ordered from approximately my favourites to least favourites

Hidden Beauty in Numbers

Scattered meanings, ambiguous code,

Laying the foundation of logic's abode,

Secrets embedded, let that be told,

covered in grey, hiding the gold.

Men see the scatter, focus on chaos,

See the divergence, believe it's mythos,

They see the dots and not the lines,

Not the curves or shaped divines.

But in these whispers holds such beauty,

From purposed null to small infinity,

To the fragile touches of chaotic functions,

To the amazement of Euclidean perfections.

And the further you go, the sillier it gets,

Until each new fact is one you cannot forget,

All ideas, thought to be obvious,

Shown to be elaborately marvellous.

The vector space of the universal system,

The fundamental axioms of absolute reason,

This is mathematics, and please believe this to be true,

That through the lectures is a new universe, waiting for you.

In the Closet (I wrote this when I was 14 and hadn't come out yet)

It hangs off me like a mutilated limb,

Restricting my movements and freedom,

Striking pain with every lurch forward I partake,

Causing a strange savage suffering, eating away.

As mentality fights my body,

In a war my body cannot win.

The agony to scream without voice,

To cry without a sense of despair,

To hide from the inevitable reality I must confront,

To feel the demented pride of successfully hiding

From others and myself;

The perfect poker face.

I know this is unnecessary

To cause myself so much distraught,,

Which in itself consumes my well-being;

For the only reason this is taking place,

Is to my credible dishonor,

I am afraid.

Embarrassed, I'd look at myself

Denied to see what I truly am,

With insufficient courage to accept myself

Question my very existence, and seeking logic

For why this abominable abaddon,

Had been leeched on to me.

But I will consistently pursue

The one ambition that grapples me with hope,

An angels hands, would give me courage

To accept my one and only fate,

And to come to terms

With who I may love.

Would You Kindly?

Sunken deep, surrounded by darkness,

Lies a utopia, purposed and free,

Where whats yours is yours, no exception,

So come in, come in, would you kindly?

Altruism the root of all evil,

have parasites fester above the sea,

Which one man sought to put an end,

So follow this man, would you kindly?

Carved deep from the sweat of a brow,

Lies a market, freer than free,

All is owned, none is shared,

So buy my product, would you kindly?

Heaven is gone, but hell is too

All that's left here is you and me,

In this city we have our rapture,

accept the rapture, would you kindly?

Atlas came to see the end,

He came with a strange decree,

When he comes to tell you his plan,

Just shrug, would you kindly?

So when you see the man, oh man,

The one who is our big daddy,

Follow his words, follow them carefully,

KILL SLAVE, would you kindly?

Power's Paradox

Men see in the sky,

Themselves as something more,

Risen on a pillar of gold,

atop a cold hard floor.

Scrambling to their prize,

they strive to rise but fall,

Seeking only virtuous means,

To attain the dream they call.

And as they fail, they fail,

And slip closer to the wall,

Breaking their promises,

And bending the law.

To succeed they succumb,

Into darkness they fall,

For power for powers sake,

Is no real power at all.

Yet while downwards they sink,

Upwards they roar,

Gaining their vision,

They finally become more.

But sitting on a throne of bone,

With dead men as their thrall,

They learn that upon a mountain of skulls,

even the great look small.

Weight

What is weight? Is it simply M-G?

Something that's described physically?

Do things have more weight then we can see?

Weight that exists immeasurably?

In the abstract world of peoples minds,

Is this weight not simply a property?

A property of meaning, purpose,

That exists even unknowingly?

Take a flag, a series of patterns,

that makes and breaks nations certainly.

It's not the flag, or pattern, that's power,

but weight that exists abstractly.

Is the pen mightier than the sword,

because the pen has weight invisibly?

Can a weak king rule a strong country,

because of this weight on society?

Perhaps this weight is most important,

In determining a destiny.

The most powerful force that exists,

entirely in ones fantasy.

So stop worrying about the seen,

And increase this weight exponentially.

Because then you're a king and a god,

who's exploiting this weight, successfully.

Unit 731

Voices stop in blood stained soil,

Remnants of the chaotic turmoil.

The creation of a perfect hell

trapped in a lost concrete shell.

A feat of the extraordinary,

in terms of their treachery,

in order to survive,

in order to thrive.

Pain of the surreal,

Essence of death's meal.

They, with standard defiance,

claim the name of science.

Each "log" processed,

Each disease assessed,

Experiments of the grotesque,

logs begging for eternal rest.

Blood-stained puss drooling

while logs bodies start pooling.

Trapped in small cages,

injected with contagions.

Biologically tested,

in disease, logs nested.

Moving into the operating room,

the real pain will begin soon.

Bodies opened for weeks on end,

50,000 in this trend,

Organs removed and analysed,

Facilities filled with logs cries.

Vessels rapture,

beyond torture,

each infected,

each vivisected.

The infection spreads,

until all are dead

and those who remained,

will be then detained;

Pushed into the furnace,

as logs surplus,

screaming, "I'm not dead!"

as the inferno fed.

These voices unheard,

for reasons absurd,

They teach lies,

as the story dies.

Forgetting is insanity,

crimes against humanity

But i will not let them run

from unit 731

Luggz (Rest in peace buddy)

There is a scottish fox that I know,

Whose very fur is the colour of love,

He can be rugged, he can be fierce,

but at the same time soft, delicate as a dove.

He has a dark side he likes to take form,

but it's all in good faith and fun!

The truth is he is extremely nice,

he is caring, thoughtful and warm as the sun.

He is a foxeh I'm extremely glad to know,

Someone who's friendship I'd never try to sever,

Someone I can rely on, someone I can trust,

He is my luggzie and I'll love him forever!

The Cringey Computer Scientist (It's self aware, don't worry ;))

You know who I am? I am a compsci Student,

You know what I be doing? Coding C 'cause I'm fluent;

When you see me walking, you see me with a stride,

cause I'm always following the rules in the style guide.

Don't you know? Well I'm a fierce damn hunter

Gonna find you in my graph, You think I'm a nutter?

FOOL! nothing will ever beat my perfect ADT,

find yo' Dracula hidden in my binary search tree!

So don't come knockin' for my hunter.c

Cause it's somethin' I know you'll never be,

Know your quicksort fool? Median of three?

Ha! And to think you believe you can beat me!

So if you think we can't beat a post-grad,

You have then truly gone totally mad,

Cause I'm up here, in coding heaven,

Owning the assignment in comp1927

Symphony of Loss

Joyous darkness, pain of trance,

dancing happily in tune of silence,

No more cares, no more wonders,

broken mental cadence thunders,

Troubles exposes the tone of mind,

When there's none left of your kind,

You drain of emotion, the rest of agony,

And compose your own deranged symphony.

Not of music, but of thought,

Staccato of pain ones surely sought,

Break the skin with a trill of steel,

Just to remind yourself you can feel.

Thinking troubles a slur in legato,

Each sad thought, itself Marcato,

The condition ascends worse and worse,

Impossible to escape this endless curse.

Drained, lost, no where to go,

Desperate to be staccatissimo,

Nothing matters, don't care anymore,

It's then the soul will stop feeling sore.

Happily dancing to silence, as said before,

For soon the sorrow will be no more,

Live this moment, define your persona,

For now the song has reached it's coda.

Do As Thy Wilt

Do as thy wilt, a sun blocked in the sky,

A red orb of kings drips blood,

the king of the dead in crimson water,

Skewering himself on a dead tree.

Do as thy wilt, a friend, a foe.

The black swordsman runs,

A bandaged hero, raped and tortured,

This world is no longer for thee.

Do as thy wilt, the sky drips,

The love of his life in someone else,

Darkness shrouds the landscape,

The very world begins to bleed.

Do as thy wilt, a mountain of screams,

Terrifying fears, his friends, his men,

The end, the end, four gods appear,

The hands that hath planted the seed.

Do as thy wilt, a voice, calling,

A castle far away in skulls of cobblestone,

No, you are the only one,

Sacrifice all that you know.

Do as thy wilt, see them burn,

Each one lays there lives for you,

You reap what you sow from their souls,

Your men, your love, you loathe.

Do as thy wilt, wrapped in a fist of stone,

Your guts hammering away, shouting your name,

Your love whisked away, devoured by a blob of teeth,

Let it end, let them end, today.

Do as thy wilt and emerge,

A femtosecond of guilt, washes away,

You are an angel of your own making,

Their dreams upon you lay.

Do as thy wilt, glorious god,

Let them suffer, take them for yourself,

The only thing they ask, as you rape,

torture,

kill,

betray,

save,

damn,

conquer,

only one command, you must follow,

at all costs...

Do as thy wilt.

Stop

I wake up seeing the sun shine,

burning my face, killing my time,

All I want is to forget the sky,

cover my face, close my eye

dream of tomorrow and wait to die,

living is necessary, it's a lie.

We think of death as darkness,

a void as a void of voidness,

but no guilt or despair,

leave me there,

I want to stay alone,

my heart my metronome,

let it stop, let me rot,

no reason but biology

asking my philosophy

breaking my neurology,

think about astronomy

for as long as the stars burn

I shall yearn

for me to be among them

back in the void again

no sound, no sight,

no darkness yet no light,

not even knowing,

never really showing,

worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry,w orr, wor,r

Vacuum

I'm Weightless here, right now,

Floating in nothing, I don't know how.

No sound can be heard, pitch nor tone,

Micro to Macro, I'm here alone.

I can see a vibrant sun flare,

It's majesty, can't help but stare,

It's radiance would make me boil

In this freezing cold turmoil.

I'd float here, my soul escaping,

Nothing to stop my arteries breaking,

Protected only be elasticity,

It's such an ominous reality.

I can't help but ask, what kills me?

the radiation that you cannot see?

Or would I simply freeze in a snap?

Or float into a pressure bomb trap?

Either way, I'm by myself,

with endless deteriorating health.

No air to breathe, no particles near,

This is truly our worst fear.

In some ways, it's kind of peaceful,

Even despite me being so fearful,

For I know, we'll all be one soon,

As I become part of this very vacuum.

Sleep

A piece of peace,

A calm that's almost unreal,

No vibration of sound or light,

Just how I'd like to feel.

Calm, soft, cool,

Floating slow and steady,

Drifting through a void,

Trying to be ready.

Darkness is ahead,

Stress, pain or violence,

But that's later, not now,

Lets remain in our blissful trance.

For now float,

Prepare for what is coming,

Close your eyes, exhale,

For soon you will be running.

Violent Shanty

Leave the rafts and on the ships as ordered!

Get on the decks and make sure all is boarded!

Load the goods, make sure all is sorted!

We shall sail, our enemies be quartered!

Oh what fun it is to voyage the seas!

Sailin' on the wood of our precious trees!

For we will sail to be what we want to be!

And purge the society, our true enemy!

Burn the ships and give no mercy!

Never let them trick you with curtsy!

Burn the villages, kill all civies!

Let them know of our Treachery!

Oh the fun of the brawl!

Take a minute to take in it all!

Watch them as they feebly crawl!

Why they drown we shall soar!

Come all, you know you want to!

We fight for the ones who are all true!

Never be deceived, they don't have a clue!

So come, all we ever needed was you!

Wishing Upon A Star

I wished upon a star afar

To seek my very destiny

Without any flick or glimmer

the star didn't listen to me

I got up upon my red roof

I reached my hands to touch the star

I strained to discover the truth

But I could only get so far

I was disappointed as hell

So I walked and began to cry

A loose plate snapped and then I fell

and hit the ground to nearly die

I lay there in pain on the lawn

Staring up at the nights cosmos

I slowly awaited the dawn,

frowning at the star, being cross

“Why can't I touch you!?” I screamed

crying tears as my body bled

The star came down like I dreamed

It saw me, this is what it said

“Mortal, the one who seeks it all

seeks future of his very soul,

uncertain of what is ahead.

Only pleasure.” is what it said

It flew back up into the sky

Leaving only such cryptic words

I lay there still, I didn't cry,

Thinking of only the absurd.

Only pleasure? What does that mean?

So angry at the stars advice

was it fake, was it just a dream?

Its words only there to entice

Finally, I then realized

Only pleasure was not knowing

for discovery mesmerized

with certainty never showing.

Always something to discover

I'll always search for knowledge

Get up and you'll soon recover

for understanding has no edge

Once wished upon a star afar

To seek my very destiny

Answers were on my own radar

but no sign of reality.

The Lil' Photon Who'd End The World

He moves through miles of space

Moving so fast, he'd win the race,

Meeting the blue dot, he got caught,

And plummets to the sky with grace

Breaking through the gradual wall

He comes down to meet us all,

Sees the view, his awe renew,

and he starts his great fall.

He decided he will stay,

And he comes down in a ray,

breaks into your home, so he can roam,

and change the littlest thing in the littlest way

A building made of stone,

he hits a block of silicone

Changes a bit, and that is it,

His disaster is more than prone.

The roof turns to sky,

so the tridents can fly,

The situation clear, it's become nuclear,

And all the men die.

Each hit releases more of him,

They scatter as the sky goes dim,

And our little friend, became our end,

How fragile is the system.

These Blue Eyes

I see blue eyes,

focused with pupils sharp,

focused in the future,

I see not art.

I see the reflection,

A great ambition,

Opportunities flood,

but they lack inspiration,

I see a face,

stoic in its nature,

gazed and aloof,

the face of rapture.

I see something lost,

And something gained,

with all the pleasures,

I still see the pain.

I see confusion,

I see intrusion,

I see infusion,

I see pollution

I see I am blind,

These ideas cloud my mind,

I don't see the present,

and what I've left behind.

The Broken Verse

Well, I guess it's not enough to try.

   I work and work to never get high,

                                                        I dunno why,

It just leaves thoughts to pry, leaving my mouth dry,

       As I contemplate what words I try to defy,

Why lie?

It's my pride that I'm trying subside,

I'm going for the ride to protect my hide,

  I'll do it with or without friends by my side,

Would it matter if cried or died as I slide

   in depression I lied,

for I committed the crime of no time,

  as expressed in rhyme, as my only sign of

                          sanity in vanity in a perfect line.

Let me stay to flay the clay of realities tray

                                                  of missed opportunities, gone away,

So I may lay to see the high marks of today

                      and say hooray, in vain

Doesn't matter anymore, we're all educations whore,

  We draw the floor and answer the call,

                                                          and we get only charges.

So we get clawed by the ravenous horde,

  Only to get discord in trust of a lord,

                                                                               that's society

So, it's over, no plea

nothings for free, there is no key,

let it be, I try to see,

but all I get...

                   ...is the failure that is me.

Your Faith Was A Lie

Leave thy body, hold onto me no longer,

For thou hast had time to feel loving embrace,

Ye rejected life's living promise,

To seek the promise of eternal reward.

Leave thy body, thy will be done,

Rejected ideas, thou's living sanctum,

Be passed onto our lord, our father,

Pray you that you were right.

Leave thy body, find the truth,

Seek to prove your own delusions,

With hope of an existential utopia,

You shall find nothing.

Leave thy body, goodbye my friend,

I have never knew ye, but I knew of,

You have left us and all humanity,

To seek the fake eternal paradise.

Why Do I Do?

My mind behaves like chairs walk,

Thoughts unwanted begin to stalk,

Images seen flash me by,

To make me drift into the sky

There is no explaining it's process,

Only that chaos is in its excess,

Hidden variables always unreachable,

Cognitive bias clouds all that is teachable.

The hardest thing to know about me,

Is how I imagine all that we see,

For even I cannot truly know,

How my mind decides to go.

Lost as my conscious swirled,

I am trapped in my own world,

Locked in a cage of self perception,

Only key is my own deception.

I am not, never was, in control,

All I know, that I see, is fable,

A slave to my own psychology,

A meat puppet of all biology.

Until finally the angel dawns,

To pick me up from the field of thornes,

And wash my mind from that unclear,

Only when I am no longer here.

Computers

Silicon, still synthetic,

Electric pulses, shoot within,

move only in one, interpret only once,

Loaded, Doped, the process will begin.

Current flows throughout creation,

Messages received, machine code generated,

Received from Meta-language,

Higher process translated.

Electric pulses, turned to light,

Flows through time and space,

Same message, in many different directions,

Each packet, organized for the race,

Such a simple process, interpretation of such,

Connecting one mind to consensus,

Allowing our representations, to communicate,

Allowing the creation of global nexus

Something invisible, but yet so clear,

The light emitting off the monitor is us,

When we leave our reality; our world,

Revolving around a universal serial bus

No more, concepts of soul,

We are all one now, the collective,

The hive mind, peak of humanity,

To offer such various, infinite perspective,

The internet, us together as one,

Join us, become the synthetic norm,

No longer held to ties of ourselves,

Just relax, integrate yourself, allowed to conform.

We are no longer individuals,

We are no longer ourselves,

We are no longer anything,

But the electric currents of these realms.

Terrible Transcendence

Hold the hope that keeps me here

The force that stops me floating away

Grasp it with ever gasping fear

For soon I shall not see the day.

please, oh please, I plead to you,

Don't let me lose my only hope!

Without it I know not what to do

The only concept I have to cope!

Fearless and smiling optimism

To pessimistic bloody tears

I shall not think of cataclysm

To open the door to all my fears

Leave my body and my mind

For the universe would never care

For co-existance of any kind

may be just too much to bare

Why oh why! I scream and cry

As I begin to cease humanity

Why friends and love dwindle to die

As I transend to infinity

No hope is left! It is all gone!

Leave this place to go alone,

I will embed to the forsworn

To vanish any way back home.

The hope leaves never to exist

I return to my mortality

As this world continues to insist

That I return to reality.

Societal Downfall

How much have we lost in the ripples of time?

How much have we lost that never was mine?

Can we go forward, is it even possible?

To move forward in what can only be a spiral?

The fires of hate burns men alive,

As the winds of torment strips them of pride,

The earth of intolerance intolerant of tolerance,

With the sea of sadness pushing back the aberrance,

Oh lord, oh god, oh fuck, oh man,

Is this the duty of all of this land?

To kill and rape and sow the seeds

Of angst and hate that are the weeds?

The weeds of society both men, women,

children and other so intricately woven,

That in the end all there is is nothing,

nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing.

Nothing but our memory for no one to hear,

Nothing but the emotion we left to bare,

How much have we lost through the ripple of time?

How much of that despair is now becoming mine?

The Dark Descent

Daniel... My name is Daniel...

I had... to forget... I... have...

Those words echo in my mind as I creep through darkened bellows,

I crouch, lurching forward into a crippling blood stained corridor,

Chains hang overhead, dripping red liquid pools on the ground that I pass

My only safety is my lantern that brights my path, my future.

Daniel... kill Alexander...

Daniel... Kill Alexander...

I walk into the kitchen, I find nothing of importance.

Some oil, a tinder box, the room is dimly lit by a single candle,

Venturing further, I find the chopped up limbs of swine hanging,

A pot of acid near, nothing I can use... I leave.

Daniel, the shadow comes for you

Remain sane, away from the shadow...

As I exit the kitchen, my lantern lighting a small distance ahead of me,

a most terrible moan beseeches me, a crackling slow yelp of endless torture,

for a half a second, I see a face ahead of me, a mouth drooped down as if melted,

I turn off the lantern, but it's too late... it knows I'm here.

Daniel don't lose your sanity,

stay out of the darkness...

I run in the kitchen and shut the door, furiously finding a place to hide,

Before I can even move a large crack snaps behind me, it's breaking through.

I go to the hanging limbless swine and hide in a pool of rotting blood and flesh,

Each bang getting louder and louder, closer and closer, until finally, the door breaks through...

Daniel, you can not fight,

Daniel, you must hide!

I hear it's choked demented breathing as it enters the kitchen,

It is a dead end, I have no where to run, it is looking for me,

It's knife scratches against the surface of the wall as it walks to the swine,

I hide behind, hoping, praying, it will not see me...

Daniel, do not look,

hide, close your eyes, do not look.

I do not know where it is, I hear it's breathing coming closer,

Its every step straining the floor boards, it is so close,

It will find me, I must run, no, no, I must stay

How do I escape the very death that awaits me in this room!?

Daniel, you must survive

Kill Alexander Daniel, Kill Alexander.

I hear nothing, a sudden silence, is it still there?

I feel it looming over me, standing in one place...

Unsure what to do, do I peak, will it find me,

I gain the courage to snoop around the corner, I find nothing.

Daniel, you must stay sane,

It is of most importance Daniel.

My vision blurred from insanity, cracking eggs echo in my mind,

It has left the kitchen, to where I do not know,

But now I must exit the kitchen, go to where it went,

I creep out, the darkness setting back in as I venture to the unknown...

Daniel... My name is Daniel...

 I had... to forget... I... have...

High School

We are different, but treated the same,

We just jump through hoops;

Taught to fly,

When we're not birds,

Taught to growl,

When we are mice,

Taught to see,

When we're blind,

Taught to think,

When we are nothing.

Left to believe, we are owned,

Not by person, but by paper,

That a number is only us,

And we are merely a mark.

Seen as inferior, treated dumb,

For the real world;

Convinced we should fly,

when we can't even run.

Failure not an option?

Try, try, try

You are limitless,

You should do everything

Anything

Because you can.

NO! we were lying

All these people are better

you are blind, dumb,

You should of done everything

Anything

but you can't.

Our Bodies, led to the wrong path.

Our hearts, guided through the wrong way.

Our brains, tricked and deceived,

Our Souls, stricken away,

Lost to the minds, in order to conform

We become merely machines,

To be used for more machines,

To grow like machines, work like machines,

To think like machines,

To act like machines.

Why are we given hope?

Taught to sing when we can't talk?

Only for the reality to crush us!

That we can't sing, if we can't talk.

Because the only way,

They believe,

The only way to learn,

To learn the truth,

The truth of everything,

Is to live it.

The truth

Is but

A lie.

Don't Be Content

Look for something lost, forget that which is found,

Walk the routine alone, embrace the silence of sound.

Through the clouds of peoples voices and their tyrant commands,

Keep looking for the way to try and escape their toxic demands.

Ignore them, once and again, forever to be true,

Leave their minds from your own body, there is no one but you!

Run and leave and drift through the souls of those militants,

So they can't keep hold of your never lasting innocence.

Don't let these people live through you,

Let yourself be the one to know what to do,

Confidence is a virtue, independence a privilege,

So know what you want as your own image.

Look in the reflection, do you like what you see?

Is it you who is the one now looking at me?

Or is it just a husk, pure form of others creations,

Void of one truth, mental artificial insemination.

Trade security for serenity? Fend for yourself?

Can you take the leap or would you rather be of health?

Sooner or later, one must enter the unknown,

And leave the place, you're so happy to call home.

Vice City

Streets bathed in neon gold,

Blue light shines to get more sold,

The vice of a city echos within,

As the people walk drenched in sin.

Walk in the street, metal in hand,

A trigger to fulfill life's final plan,

Such a small device, a tiny gun,

End a mans life; just for fun.

Pearly white beaches stretch far,

You driving around in a super car,

This truly is the life, can't you see?

A city of bliss and naughty ecstasy.

But you then realize, this isn't real,

It's the image on a monitor encased in steel,

It's just a game, when you get nitty gritty,

but I'll still love Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Men Vs God

Men, men see, men know,

They go and go and go,

Work and live and smile,

Live a life worth while.

Gods, they create, they stop,

Their meaning, they know, is naught.

What a god truly sought,

the ground that all men walk.

Men feel pain and despair,

Knowing that life is unfair,

Worth living they say,

Let me see my last day.

Gods, listen, watch, stand

Illogical, men's land.

They died years ago,

Men will be in tow.

Men, realize, too late,

That life is not great.

All men want to do is fly,

So let them try, let them die.

Gods, want to be born,

In a life full of scorn,

They sit, waiting,

Men fly, damming.

Men live, Men live,

No reason left to give,

Gods don't see the point,

Life

Gods die, stay dead,

Afterlife their home stead,

Men are afraid to see the end,

Death.

Floating among the stars

Blinding light, it casts the darkest shadow behind the wings,

I open my eyes, and take my first real breathe,

looking over into a void, dotted by giants of immeasurable power,

only specs though.

I relax, I hear only the sounds I make,

The wisp of air going into my mouth,

Inhale, exhale, the only thing that is present,

I let go, and I move or everything else simply moves away from me.

The white bars escape my presence, it all floats away,

I stand still, with nothing keeping me down, I'm free.

I turn my head and hold my breathe, to hear an unearthly silence,

a silence captured by the void, for I am present and nothing else is.

I float in space, the rays of the sun gleaming upon my suit,

Brighter than anything I've ever seen.

Yet equally magnificent creations, continuous explosions, nuclear bombs.

All seem like nothing.

I stare back, the earth, the moon, everything, it's all... small.

Am I upside down? Where am I? Is this my home?

I let out that breathe, tired of the silence that is unachievable,

to simply float, forever more, with nothing.

Perpetual Servitude

A servant of thought, sits at his desk,

Shining in pride, reading symbols on a screen,

Ones with lines and dots and circles,

That tell him what to do through shackles

A servant of machine, stands at the line,

As happy as can be, moving his hands,

Putting things on other things as they come,

Awaiting their service from the slave.

A servant of man, stands at the podium,

Full of vigor, projecting some sounds,

Tone after tone, mouth movements flow,

In order to please its real master

Servants controlled by servants,

Cooperation through obedience,

All abide, All adhere,

For Necessity and Fear.

All seek to be free,

Free from their own grasp.

And one day such will happen,

And all will be free,

Through fire and suffering,

Men will be free,

Through ending and oblivion,

women will be free,

For the fires of their servants.

Will come down upon them,

And through the bright flash,

All will be free.

And chaos will rise,

Devolve in Anarchy,

And all will peril in the abaddon,

And all will curse the freedom,

And the slaves will rise,

To be slaves once more,

And all will be gone.

Who is God?

Who is god?

Is he the being that created us?

Through ultimate power, spawned life,

Beauty, love and all things glorious

And yet, created evil,

Allowed us to defy him so we could be punished,

Forbid his creations to do acts he created,

So that we could be judged, when we're finished.

Does that make sense? Who is god?

Is he the being that loves us?

That through all bad times and sorrows, is there?

Always watching with love, someone we can trust?

But catastrophe occurs!

Men die, women tortured and children succumb to illness,

How is love, when a Holocaust survivor writes

"god will have to beg for my forgiveness"

Who then is god?

Is he all powerful?

Is he all knowing?

Is he all present?

Why do prayers remains unanswered?

Why can hope remain so dim?

If god is always at my side,

Why do I never see him?

Who is god?

Become Death

A great fire burns in the sky,

Yet silent and terrifying I see,

A creation of a destruction,

With only a pane of glass protecting me.

Bolts of red hot metal scatter,

invisible men flash behind my eyes,

Seeing all of them burn in agony,

My smile of contempt my disguise.

I see the weight I have created,

hanging over me like a neutron star,

The world shackled by my inventions,

Humanities achievements sure have come far.

In chaos the world has truly become MAD

In order the worlds wars will become cold

For in the brightest of lights, I see the darkest of shadows

I have become death, destroyer of worlds.

Expectation

My son, my daughter, my child,

On a planet hanging by a string,

I wonder what you will achieve,

In what light will you bring

I know you now, but not tomorrow,

I feel what you felt, see what you saw,

How do you live and go?

That makes me look to you in awe

Who are you?

A puppet or a puppeteer?

Do you move as I do

are you far or near?

Can I be happy, or sad?

Are you Life or death, do you fight or flee?

Does it show that time is reversible,

if it is your actions that affect me?

I am on a rope with a pulley,

Plumeting through the fourth,

Never slowing down,

until I reach what I've sought.

You and I, are we alike?

Do we still listen with our mind?

Can I say that I am proud?

Did you finally contribute to mankind?

Impatience

Fury in passion, burning light strikes through,

In the aura of confidence and minds true,

One shivers at the sight of the brilliant invisible colours,

Of others passions that one is left without.

Reap in your own shattered pieces of memories and hopes,

Be left to look at those with angel wings; soaring high,

Why you are glued to a ground made of rotting leaves and mud,

Watching the horizon collapse above you, falling down to crush.

Maybe, if one of those rainbow streaks shines down on you,

Fills you with warmth from the heavenly field,

Snuggled by soft fur, felt to feel the calm ecstasy of bliss,

Maybe then, your doors be opened and life completed.

Until then, you shall wait in the rain,

Waiting for your chance to soar among the others,

Be risen above the pitiless, weak men you have been,

Maybe then, you can be granted back your spirit.

Brick in the wall

From the fire and thrown in the brink,

Locked away by violent instinct,

Let no man pass through this mind's eye,

Freewill will cease to glow, flicker to die.

Individuality never to exist,

Influence of society will persist,

Shuffled into a realm of order,

The world hinging from the border.

We are puppets, puppets we are,

Becoming the proof of societies scar,

A single cell of a body too great,

To even try to care about it's own state.

We are taught to conform,

Taught to be nothing but the norm,

They're trying to make you so digital,

Telling you that you're so miniscule.

You, to them, are a just a number,

Just one with money and labor to plunder,

Why doesn't anyone stand and say no?

No one seems to be willing to let ideas flow!

This is what they do to you and me,

A truth that only so few people can see,

When Machine like behavior is their infatuation,

You wonder why this is what they call "Education".

Tsar Bomba

Imagine if you will, I placed a candle,

On a rocky cliff, in the shadow of night,

And I pulled on a match in which I struck,

To set this lonesome candle alight.

Imagine if you will, I placed another,

A metre apart, now on some clay,

I burned the new candle, and placed another,

And continued to place more until the day.

Imagine if you will, I did this forever,

Until every corner of the earth was in flame,

Every ocean and mountain, every crack and crevice,

There was no area that the candle did not claim.

Imagine if you will, these candles had burned,

From even before I had begun to place them,

That when the universe was birthed, the candles ignite,

Across the earth throughout all of time's stem.

Imagine if you will, the earth on fire,

Ignited by candles from time's beginning,

And all the energy and power released,

Was condensed into one, single happening.

Imagine if you will, this happening was quick,

In a split second, in less time you could think,

And this happening was created by no less than man,

And this happening had happened in a single blink

Imagine if you will, the power of these candles,

Burning across the earth, across time, like a star,

Imagine if you will, the true power of man,

The true extent of our creation, the power of the Tsar.

Cognitive Collapse

Numbers have patterns, and life does as well.

I see myself as part of a larger pattern, one that binds us all together.

For I influence all things and all things must influence me.

My bubble of impact moves outwardly at the speed of light,

existing without form, existing without time.

A storm is coming, all these bubbles, all these webs,

The temporal wind disrupts all that I can see.

I stand against it because I can, because I ought to.

But no one asks why they move forward,

They only do, automatons of influence.

They are shadows amoungst the storm that is my mind,

Perhaps I am the only one who exists,

Perhaps I influence nothing but myself.

If past actions influence the future,

why can't the future influence the past.

I can sit down amongst the rain,

the hail, lightning and sparks

I will always remain here.

Without form, without time.

My bubble forever expanding

Even when I am no more

No more, never was,

never will be.

Stop Hiding Bitch

We all have our secrets, our hidden desires

fears, hopes and dreams, we're all just liars

What we see and what we know, so intrinsic

So forgive me if I'm a bit pessimistic

We all say what we don't think

Think what we never say

And try to hide from what we are

Try to make the thoughts go away

(But they won't, they're here to stay)

So hide, hide, hide, it's so pointless

Because all it does is cause you so much distress

There is nothing you can do, don't hide it

Must not fight it, must just learn to live with it

We lie, to others, to ourselves

No matter what we do, we'll always lie

The truth kicks us in the heads,

burns us, hurts us, until we die

(Let yourself go, learn to fly)

So accept it, Accept your fate

Accept all the things at stake

and just leave, leave your haunt

Don't give the truth a chance to taunt

Live life, live it to it's fullest

Don't worry about what you really believe

Your true self is fueled by your thought of it

It's fueled by the way you decide to perceive

(Feed it and it will succeed)

Don't hide from yourself

Don't fight yourself

Don't deny yourself

But accept yourself

What You Did

Innocence gone to waste,

My sense of will, yours to taste

demented conceptions of the best

Lingering pain to never rest

Burn my soul with your stare

Do not what is right or fair

Such words mean nothing to you

and your delusions of virtue

Corruption fornicates inside

Words say promise but always lied

Keep your hands of rusted possession

They mean nothing in bloody recession

Cheat the system

Disturb the rhythm

Only one way to beat them

And that's to join them!

Like a virus, evil spreads

Leave us without any heads

For our minds are lost and gone

into this deep, dark abaddon

Mandlebrot

Twirling, spiraling, looping, spinning,

zooming to nowhere, trying, flying,

So Simply Complex, running, flowing,

the thumbprint of god, gliding, sliding.

From the imaginary, zooming,

From one simple equation, fleeing,

Creating a universe, roaming,

More vast than ours, magnifying.

Mandelbrot,

The fractal,

The Skeleton galaxy,

The eye in creation,

The limitless void in space,

The beginning and end of time.

Time

Tick Tock, says the clock,

Time be-a tickin' away and away

Always forwards, a runaway train,

To hope, pride, chaos or dismay

Slows down for no man,

The inalienable consequence of existence,

Put things on hold? well;

Just remember of times omnipotence.

Want to do more?

Well you better hurry and catch up!

Because times already ahead

And you'll be left behind; a vulnerable pup.

Chaos theory? Well it's just that!

A mistake made will be worse and worse;

Time is impartial, it is above,

It doesn't care if you're not in a hearse.

You WILL die and time WILL end,

but that's just the run away train again.

So live your life running after time,

A rat race against a god, like a vicious friend.

Some Edgy Thing

Please, no more, it's gone on long enough,

Just let me be, for once, just let me float in nothing.

I hate the boundaries of living space,

The boundaries given by my own imagination.

Why? Why can't I transcend this gap,

Transcend from darkness to see light and love,

I'm just stuck here, things pile on and on,

the intensity of the weight on my back.

PLEASE! It's going to crush me! Everything!

I plead you! You've had your way with me!

Get that breathe of death away from me!

You hurt my friends! I have to help them!

NO! Let my soul back! GO AWAY!

THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO SAY

Left in the bitter cold, the foul stench,

pity and agony, no where to turn.

Be back once more, no where to run,

leave me so I can think of numbers,

You've done enough already, good bye,

In darkness I revel seen by no eye.

Furry Pride (yes... I wrote one of these)

We are ones that stand proud

In the face of a bitter humanity.

We hold ourselves, paws side by side

To output only sincerity

For we are furries,

We embrace our true nature,

Not blinded by conformity,

Or scared by such rapture.

We live these lives

Perhaps in secret,

Those emotions in us

Only ours to interpret.

But here, right now,

We'll stand tall and proud

As we discuss our lives;

We are one of a crowd.

So embrace yourselves!

Paws, tails and scales,

Remain intact

through all of life's trails.

For there's only one thing

The world should see

Us saying, "I'm a furry,

and that's fine with me!"

Discordianism: Pure Chaos

For a long time I felt a need for spirituality. I don't exactly know where that needs comes from, perhaps it's a desire to feel special or be in the place of the unexplainable. I remember talking to someone who believed they could cast invisible fire and thinking how awesome that must be to believe these powers are possible. Funnily enough, I felt this need in particular after watching the show "Vikings" which had a lot of scenes reflecting the cool and interesting (but mostly exaggerated and fictional) spiritual happenings of Norse Paganism. So I had sought to fill in a new spiritual side of me and adopt a form of spirituality, maybe even adopt a religion.

And yet such a pursuit was very difficult because of something fundamental in my belief system, I don't believe in spirits. Or more so, I don't believe in the metaphysical, I believe that all that exists is the physical, it's interactions and the abstraction of those interactions. Not believing in anything spiritual or supernatural makes becoming more spiritual pretty much impossible, or so I thought. In my soul searching I came across a religion I had not heard of, something that was truly unlike any religion I've ever seen before. It was a religion that was almost impossible to grasp and extremely difficult to learn about, but this to me made the religion more like a puzzle which made it even more interesting. Over time this religion became something more than a curiosity, starting off as something simply funny and now becoming, maybe, a true religion that I believe in. I'm talking about Discordianism.

What is Discordianism?

I had thought about writing this article for a long time but I kinda always hit a wall at this part, because Discordianism is really hard to describe. There is the literal history of the religion which I could talk about, the internal lore and the philosophy but none of this really grasps the Discordian mindset, a sort of feeling that's not so easy to describe. But for now these things will have to do.

The literal history of Discordianism is kinda unremarkable. In the 1960s two people under the pseudonym Omar Ravenhurst and Malaclypse the Younger decided to take it upon themselves to invent a parody religion. The religion was designed to make fun of contemporary religions at the time, particularly Christianity, by inventing a sorta counter-culture religion, an anti-religion. It is designed to be funny and not take things seriously, particularly it is designed embrace the absurd and the banal. The two wrote down this new religion into a book called the "Principia Discordia". The original writings of this book has since been lost to time with no original copies still existing, so the Principia that you see now is simply a retelling from what people original got from the book. Anyway the book, and the religion, spread like wild fire and actually resulted in quite a movement in the 1960's.

But how does a parody religion go from being a parody religion to an actual religion with real believers? This is in part because of it's unique philosophy on life and the universe. I should first mention that the biggest tenant of the religion is to not take anything, including the religion itself, too seriously. A hot dog is the holy food of the religion and the Principia itself is littered with jokes and self-aware paradox. People who take things too seriously are usually referred to as "Greyface", and while this is usually taken antagonistically it is never with scorn, because you can't take "not taking things seriously" too seriously either.

I think that comes to the philosophy of Discordianism which is fundamentally about chaos. Chaos is taken as holy in Discordianism and is taken as the true state of all things and the state to strive towards. This however creates some interesting paradoxes such as, if everyone is striving to chaos isn't that a form of order? Instead of shying away from these paradoxes Discordianism actively embraces them and says "Yes, ye Saint, nay shall one strive only for chaos, for chaos without order can become an order and so one must strive to be truly chaotic by rejecting chaos when it suits" (not an actual quote). So discordianism is actively a religion about paradox and confusion and so it actively hammers down on these paradoxes tenfold, which is why the religion is so hard to explain. For example the five rules of Discordianism, known as the pentabarf, are contradictory and one of the unspoken rules is to actively not follow any of these rules (including this unspoken rule itself). The discordian humour is both in its parody of the occult and it's self aware logical inconsistencies. Again it's hard to explain. Luckily there is a more traditional theological story to go with it.

Our Goddess Eris

Discordianism does have a deity, the Greek goddess Eris or (to the Roman's) Discordia. The original version of Discordianism effectively followed the same myths the Greeks had about Eris, namely the Judgement of Paris. In this Greek story, Eris, the godddess of discord, was not invited to a wedding between Peleus and Thetis because Zeus believed Eris would just cause trouble (to Discordians this is known as "The Great Snub"). Eris, angered by this, created a golden apple inscribed with the words "Th Kallisti" (which roughly translates to "The most beautiful" or "The most fair"), she then throws this Apple of Discord into the crowd at the wedding. Three goddesses fight over the apple each believing the apple belongs to them and through a series of events this leads to the war of Sparta and Troy, the first human war. While in the original Greek myth Eris is seen as evil and an antagonist, the Discordian perspective sees her as an endearing protagonist, bringing mischief and true chaos to the world.

Discordianism however is a religion about chaos and so this traditional narrative is not necessarily always followed, nor is it encouraged to be followed. In fact originally, Malaclypse the Younger did not believe Eris to be a real goddess (like Omar did) but instead a personification of true chaos in this universe, a philosophical idea as opposed to a true deity (something I subscribe to). Furthermore the original mythos has been widely discussed and new additions have been added, particularly the introduction of Harmonia, goddess of order and harmony (also a Greek deity, though in some texts Harmonia is also Eris). One thing that is now often accepted and alluded to in the original text is the distinction between disorder and chaos. The general idea is that there exists true chaos, a fundamental uncertainty at the brink of the universe that has no form or function but simply is. Arising from this true chaos is "Order" (personified in Harmonia) and "Disorder" (personified in Eris) which are apparent manifestations interpreted by humans. And while most religions embrace the order, discordianism instead embraces the disorder.

Funnily enough this distinction of order, disorder and chaos actually has some reflection of true modern physics. Quantum Mechanics, for example, is fundamentally chaotic and indeterminate as an observed system in a quantum superposition will "collapse" to one of it's states randomly. This apparent randomness is fundamental and is not explained any further in QM, only that it simply exists, this is the pure chaos. However, the nature of the chaos is well defined and behaves orderly, this means that statistically these chaotic events will cancel out and create an apparent order (like what is classical physics). However this order also creates numerous interactions that can become hard to describe in real world systems, this is a form of disorder that is also fundamental in physics. Order, Disorder and Chaos are all described here and are fundamental, but the most fundamental is the initial, unknowable, chaos. And don't even get me started on the nature of entropy.

The In Jokes

So that's a bit about the philosophy and theology of Discordianism, but as I stated this only really scratches the surfaces. Because this religion is fundamentally disorganized there's not some single location that explains everything, discordianism is a sort of unspoken culture full of in jokes. Some of these in jokes are fully described in the Principia and the illuminatus trilogy (a fictional story being heavily influenced by Discordianism), this includes things like the rule of 5's (everything comes in 5's, or is somehow related to 5's) and fnord (a word that exists everywhere but people are simply conditioned to never notice it). Some of these in jokes are a little harder to describe, one is kinda a concept of saying things that don't make sense but sound like they make sense, kinda like speaking similar to zen proverbs. Others are more systematic, like operation mindfuck which was a massive culture jamming movement of the 1960's and 1970's and to create countless ridiculous and satirical conspiracy theories (particularly relating the illuminati).

Some people truly and wholly believe in this religion, including the theological aspects of the religion. Some people incorporate the philosophy of the religion into their paganistic views, practicing magicks in the name of discord. Others, like me, take the religion to scratch a spiritual itch and to encompass the philosophy of embracing chaos and not taking things too seriously into our daily lives. The religion started off as a silly satirical religion, but given that is decentralized and chaotic it is only natural for it to evolve into something it was not intended originally. Discordianism is a parody religion that evolved into a true unique philosophy and a true religion that has many followers to this day.

While I didn't put Discordianism on the census, I'd still consider myself a follower of this religion, in whatever respects that mean.

Set Relativism

I'm autistic and when I was younger this condition was much more pronounced for me. One of the main concepts that is difficult for some autistic people to grasp is the concept of other perspectives and subjectivity. When I was young I didn't consider other peoples emotions, I instead only considered my own. To me everything was an objective reality aligned with my own experiences. This made me not a very nice person and made it difficult to adapt to society and social settings, so for a long time I didn't have many friends at all. What helped me move away from this perspective wasn't just over time, but it was a logical and philosophical undertaking that is under pined by my greatest interest, Physics.

When I was about thirteen my brother taught me about something in school he had recently learned, Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. My understanding of the universe at the time was one of objectivity, that things exist because they simply do, that science is the truth and everything else is false. Special Relativity tells us that things in the universe that we believe are constant, like the passing of time and the dimensions of space, are not necessarily so and instead depend on the velocity you're moving at. As you get closer to the speed of light things around you appear to slow down, time moves slower in your perspective. Importantly though those objects aren't moving slower, they just appear to be moving slower from your perspective because those objects appear to be moving fast and to their perspective you are moving fast and it's you who is moving slower in time. I was very interested in this concept but couldn't really understand it, how could both things move slower than each other at the same time? You can only explain it by discarding the concept of an objective truth, of an object reference of time, and instead say there are two different equally valid perspectives of the universe.

This was ground breaking for me. While I understood the concept of subjectivity, like what is the best colour and what is the best song, I had always assumed and believed that even these had an objective answer.  Everything to me was objective and I didn't see myself as a perspective in a soup of subjectivity reaching for the objective but instead I was an arbitrator of the objective, my favourite song was the best song, my favourite colour is the best colour. Here however I was given the question which object is moving slower in time? And the answer is impossible to see objectively because they're moving slower in time relative to each other, thinking in terms of the objective only leaves paradox. This to me finally opened my eyes to the idea of multiple truths existing simultaneously, this moved me to Relativism.

Relativism in philosopher circles is kinda a naughty word. Philosophy is about answering the deep and meaningful questions of metaphysics and relativism doesn't really do that. It almost seems both obviously right and obviously wrong at the same time, of course things are subjective. Moral Relativism, the concept that true morals don't exist and instead depend on the society it exists in, seems like something obvious for somethings (like differing cultures and what-not) but seem totally wrong for others (it is wrong to kill pretty much universally). Relativism, to philosophers I suppose, is uninteresting and unimagined, it's like objectivism, it's "kiddy" philosophy that will one day allow you to move to real philosophy once you intellectually matured.

Truth be told this is somewhat true. As I had understood the concept that two truths can exist simultaneously, I started playing around with this concept and extended it to more things. Eventually, as one often does, I started applying it to everything and getting the perspective that "Everything is Relative", a common phrase people come up with. This helped me immensely in my life for a time, I started seeing myself as smaller with less important opinions. I was not the arbitrator of the objective but instead simply a voice in a cloud trying to get my point across. The concept that I might be wrong even if I really thought I was right became common place and I even embraced the idea that everyone could be wrong. Eventually this gave me new insights into empathy, psychology and navigation of social settings, so to me this philosophy was truly life changing. But, I had not applied the intellectual rigor yet and when I would debate this with friends they would be quick to point out its failings. If everything is relative, then is relativity relative? Is math relative? And so forth. Over time I developed my own personal theory of Relativism I call Set Relativism that attempts to address all the criticisms of relativism. I believed, with how impactful relativism had in my life that there must be truth in it. So lets explain what Set Relativism is.

The first principle in Set Relativism is that it is founded in absurdism. This is to say that whether there exists an objective truth to the universe does not matter really because such an objective truth is unprovable. If one person were to claim that they had a proposition that was true for all the universe, there would be no way he could prove with 100% certainty that the absolute truth exists. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is perhaps a testament to that. The theorem states that no mathematical theory can be both complete and consistent at the same time. Most of our mathematics rely on things known as Axioms, these are assumptions that we cannot prove are true but instead assert are true as part of the foundations of our mathematical formulation. Unfortunately we didn't create the physical universe we live in so we can't assert the axioms of our universe and instead can only infer them. These axioms are the laws of nature, the rules of physics we try to document, but where these rules came from we can never truly know and because the best we can do in figuring out these rules is to simply infer they exist we can never truly know whether these rules actually exist in the way we believe them too. So we can never truly prove any foundational proof of our universe, at least that's what Set Relativism postulates. As part of the relativistic theory itself, it doesn't claim to know things as that would be paradoxical. Instead Set Relativism says we assume that no objective truth is provable, and go from there, knowing in our minds that this foundation can be wrong.

The second principle in Set Relativism is that the universe is full of observers. Observers are not necessarily conscious, but are all perspectives, an infinite number, that the universe can possibly be rendered at. A perspective on a fundamental level can be seen as a sort of mathematical algorithm, a set of rules to apply to every point in the universe at every point of time. From these rules you assign certain properties to these points of spacetime in which you can ask questions, what is the colour, what is the distance, what is the morality of this point? For example, how I see this universe is a perspective based on my history, philosophy and limited human physiology, as well as my place in space-time and limited life span. I could ask "what is the colour of this text" and I can say "Black", I could also ask "what is the colour of the star 100 light years away 2 billion years in the future" and the answer would be "I don't know", as that's beyond my possible reference frame. A rock would equally have a perspective, it's function would be governed by physics and it's interpretation, it can only record interactions it has directly. Rays from the sun cause it to increase in temperature, time causes it to eventually crumble, ask it a question like is something morally good and it would have no answer, but ask it about it's physical interactions and it can answer. A question-answer dichotomy may not necessarily be the best analogy, a rock obviously can't answer questions, but what my point is, is that an observer is simply a state of possible interactions ran through some internal mathematical function. Each observer interacts with a limited number of things and these interactions interact in a specific way potentially unique to that observer. The whole collection of possible (and impossible) interactions within all time and all space for that observer make up the perspective of that observer.

The third principle is that each set of observers creates a new observer. As atoms create molecules which create proteins which create cells which create brains which create you, each component when combined creates something new. This is the fundamental concept that makes Set Relativism slightly different as it encompasses not just observers but sets of observers.  Another minor concept here is it also encompasses virtual observers, observers that exist within observers in sort the opposite fashion as a set of observers. An example of a virtual observer is the world of mathematics, it's an observer that doesn't really exist but instead exists as an idea in another observer. We'll get to why the concept of observer sets and virtual observers are important in the fourth principle.

The fourth principle is that truth only exists within the confines of an observer set. That is any truth must be framed within a set of observers. For example, normally when we talk about morals we talk with an implicit observer set of humanity, we say what are morals to humanity, not what are morals to animals or to rocks. We know rocks don't have morals, we know that question makes no sense, so we implicitly frame our question of what are good morals in terms of the limited set of humanity. We may ask what is the best song, but what we should instead frame the question as is what is the best song to this group of people, like what is the best song to our friends, to our relatives, to the world, to the universe, each will have a completely different answer. Mathematical truths may seem to violate this. Mathematical truths are true everywhere, it doesn't matter if you're a rock, a human or a god, 1 + 1 will always equal 2. But we have actually implicitly pointed mathematical truths to an observer set, the virtual observer of mathematics itself. Remember the axioms before? We created a universe, a new observer (the virtual observer) with some fundamental rules that we assert are true for this observer, then knowing those rules can prove absolute facts (like 1 + 1 = 2). But these facts only are absolutely true in the universe we created, they're still only true to the virtual observer we created, there is still an implicit concept of relativism here. We cannot prove that 1 + 1 = 2 in our universe, we can only infer that mathematical truths seem to be consistent with universal ones, but we can't prove it.

The Fifth and final principle is the concept of the unknowable. For any questions there could exist a set of observers to which that question is unknowable. An example is what is the best colour, to me the best colour is red and if the observer set is just me this becomes the truth for that observer set. However if I were to ask a friend as well and they said blue, if we combined both our perspectives and we were unable to convince each other of any answer the question of what is the best colour suddenly becomes unknowable. It's possible, but not provable (see the first principle) that all questions could be, when encompassing all perspectives, unknowable. 

What do all these principles actually give us a guiding framework? I've already typed a lot so maybe I will just summarize what I believe are the ramification of these principles in nice little words.

  1. Everything you know should be considered a belief, and there should exist some doubt in your mind for even the most trivially true assertions. Facts do not exist.

  2. When dealing with something that is unknowable for a certain set of observers you have two options, either convince the set of observers to follow one path or to limit your set of observers to believe in a truth. We all implicitly do this, we either argue for our point or admit that the point we have is not knowable and instead focus on what that means to us, or maybe to our close friends.

  3. Concepts should be treated in the frame of an intellectual marketplace (the famous "marketplace of ideas"). This might not be popular among my friends but it's important to realize that every opinion and even "fact" still relies on someone to believe it. Belief in that idea is the only thing that truly matters, and convincing people to believe in that idea (whether through intellectual debate, hard scientific evidence or logical fallacy) is the only way to propagate that idea.

  4. Uncertainty is OK. It is ok to believe something and to also admit you don't know if it is true. In this regard we ask what is this thing in the perspective of two different observer sets. I believe that homophobia is bad, that is fundamentally true in my perspective and fundamentally true in a lot of other perspectives too. However if I were to move my perspective to the grand universe I understand that the truth of this becomes a bit more unknowable. Even if I were to define a metric of bad, unless the metric was so obvious as to create a virtual observer (Bad = Homophobia, so is homophobia bad?) I still grant that I cannot truly know whether homophobia is bad. But not knowing whether homophobia is bad to the world or to the universe doesn't matter, what matters is that homophobia is definitely bad to me and my friends (an application of 2.), and so I'm willing to invest that principle in the wider observer set of humanity to hopefully align those ideas to mine, creating a new truth for the observer set of humanity.

  5. We all have a responsibility to spread the ideas we believe in, because if we do not they will die. Ideas progress via natural selection.

I believe Set Relativism is useful for understanding the nature of truth in our universe, even if it doesn't give any concrete answers. It has helped me immensely and is extremely important to me, but I am always happy to admit that I could be wrong and encourage intellectual debate. I hope this cleared up some ideas of my core philosophy on life and the universe.

Who would win? One Sun sized Earth or 1.3 million Earth sized Suns?

I recently posted a Twitter question asking people to ask crazy science questions, and I'm finally getting around to answering them. Two difference science questions come to mind, but because I'm waiting for Maplesoft to tell me I can have Maple, I am going to pick the easiest question first. The question is of course.

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Who would win? One Sun sized Earth or 1.3 million Earth sized Suns?

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The short answer is neither, they both die.

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Why is the Sun sized Earth Dead?

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First off the Sun sized Earth is dead, no question. Why? Well first we have to make the assumption that the Earth simply ADDS mass to be as large as the Sun. So how much mass is being added to the Earth? If we assume the Earth is just a sphere we know that the Earth has a radius of 6,371 kilometres with a mass of 5.972 * 10²⁴ kg. The Sun, on the other hand, has a radius of 696,340 kilometres, more than 100x the radius of Earth. Because the mass of an object is proportional to it's volume and the volume of a sphere is proportional the cube of the radius we can calculate that the new mass of the earth is 7.798 * 10³⁰ kg!

That's bloody heavy, on the surface of our new Earth-Sun gravity is 1.073 km/s, this is more than 40x the surface gravity on Jupiter and 4x the surface gravity of our Sun. A house cat would weigh as much as a grand piano on the surface! So that's great, because a lot of pressure and gravitational force means a lot of energy and because our Earth weighs MORE than the Sun you'd expect it would turn into a Sun right?

The problem is the Earth is made of very different things than our Sun. You see the Sun gets its energy from the fusion of hydrogen into helium and this fusion releases a tremendous amount of energy which causes the Sun to expand against the gravitational force the Sun is experiencing. The problem is Earth's core is not made of hydrogen but it's made of iron which cannot be fused to create energy. Iron is the most nuclear stable element in the universe and so changing it into something else such as via fusion (or even fission) actually costs energy instead of gives energy like in the case of hydrogen (or uranium for fission). The outer layers of the Earth have less iron and have elements such as silicon and oxygen that CAN fuse but these requires a tremendous amount of pressure to fuse and even our Earth-Sun is not massive enough to fuse it. The hydrogen found within a planet is simply too sparse to cause any kind of real fusion.

So what would our Earth-Sun become? Well it wouldn't remain a planet, it is simply beyond the size and mass to function as a rocky planet. The tremendous amount of pressure the core would experience would be far beyond what the core would maintain and so the planet would immediately begin to collapse in on itself. The collapse would be equivalent to a stellar supernova as a tremendous amount of energy is released in the violent collapse, dispersing a huge amount of mass outwards. Our Earth-Sun is not QUITE heavy enough to form into more exotic stellar objects like a black hole or neutron star, instead the core collapses to become extremely dense degenerate matter. Degenerate matter is not held up by the electromagnetic force like most matter is, instead it's held up by Quantum Mechanics via a principle called the Pauli Exclusion Principle. In a nutshell matter (specifically fermions like electrons, protons and neutrons) don't like to be in the same quantum state as each other but gravity is trying to force them into the same state by compressing them a tonne and so Pauli Exclusion fights against it in what's called degenerency pressure. The degenernecy pressure is more than the gravitational energy for our Earth-Sun so the core stops from collapsing completely into nuclear matter (IE: Into a neutron star).

Degenerency matter however is extremely dense at about 10000 kg/cm³, this is approximately two million times denser than Earth is. This means our Sun sized Earth quickly becomes much smaller with a radius of just 1776 km according to this website. That's shockingly close to the size of the moon! The surface gravity of the Earth-Sun is now an astounding 165,001 km/s! A house cat on this Earth-Sun would weigh as much as the Titanic! The Earth-Sun is now officially what is called a white dwarf, usually this is the result of a dead star but the Earth-Sun fits the bill quite nicely. The heat of all the energy from gravity and degenerency pressure causes the Earth-Sun to heat up to well above 30,000 C which causes it to shine brilliantly. The Earth-Sun is essentially dead, in that it's not gaining any energy and only losing energy for the rest of it's life, however it's losing energy due to thermal radiation outwards which is fairly inefficient for massive objects so you'd expect the Earth-Sun to shine for a few billion years, maybe much, much longer!

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Why are the Earth sized Suns Dead?

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There are two possible answers to this question. The first is a boring one because if we just simply take the components of a star and put them in a mass sized earth we essentially just get a big cloud of gas that behaves pretty inertly. Gravity would heat up the gas and cause the formation of what's called a gas planet (essentially a small gas giant) but there wouldn't be enough energy for fusion and so nothing interesting would happen. Pretty boring. So let's make it more interesting and instead we say what if we got the core of an actively fusing star and then suddenly teleport the core to only have the mass of the earth while the fusion was still ongoing? And what if we repeated that 1.3 million times? 

As said before the Sun produces a certain amount of energy from fusion which fights against the energy due to gravity. The sun fuses 620 million tonnes of hydrogen every second, fusion carries away 0.7% of the mass of mass into energy (the rest forming into helium). Using Einstein's famous E = mc² equation we get that the Sun produces 5.58*10²⁵ Joules of energy per second. That's the equivalent of one hundred million of the most powerful thermonuclear bombs going off at once, every second. 

But unfortunately we have to keep in mind the premise of the question, we're REDUCING the size of the Sun to the size of the Earth so we're gonna reduce the Sun's mass. Using the same proportion as we calculated before we know that the Sun is about 331,000 times heavier than the Earth so we're gonna reduce the energy to that proportion. So for one Sun-Earth we release about 1.683*10²⁰ joules of energy with the fusion stopping immediately because the Sun-Earth is not massive enough to keep fusion going. This is now only 100 times more powerful than the most powerful thermonuclear bomb so it's not nearly as impressive despite the fact we're causing a tremendous amount of destruction. All in all sadly the fate of our Sun-Earth even in this scenario doesn't change much. Essentially a large chunk of gas would be blown away by the explosion but ultimately the explosion probably wouldn't be powerful enough to blow away all the gas and so the gas will eventually condense again after millions of years and form a slightly smaller gas planet. All in all it's a little lame, but we need to remember we have 1.3 million of these little bombs...

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So who would win?

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Well as I said before they both kinda die, but maybe the question of who would win is less about who survives and more about how spectacularly they die. So a better question is who produces the most energy? 

We'll start with our Earth sized Suns, we calculated before that one Earth sized Sun produces 1.683*10²⁰ Joules of Energy upon it's death but we have 1.3 million of them giving a total of a massive  2.188 * 10²⁶ joules of energy or over ONE BILLION of the most powerful thermonuclear weapons humanity has ever created all going off at once. That's a very big bomb!

But this, unfortunately, absolutely pales in comparison to the bomb we created with our Sun sized Earth. As I said before the collapse of our Sun sized Earth releases as much energy as a small supernova. To calculate the energy released we notice that the energy comes from the difference in the gravitational binding energy. The equation for gravitational binding energy is given as:

We have to calculate how much energy was released by comparing the gravitational binding energy from when the Earth-Sun was the size of the Sun to when it was the size of a white dwarf (the moon). The initial gravitational binding energy is -1.748 *10⁴³ Joules, that's a LOT but we have deduct it from the gravitational binding energy of our white dwarf which is even more massive at -6.855 * 10⁴⁵ Joules! This means the total amount energy we outputted is a massive 6.837 * 10⁴⁵ Joules! That's 30 quintillion times more powerful than our 1.3 million Earth sized Suns could ever hope to achieve. How many of the most powerful thermonuclear bombs is it? It's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 many thermonuclear bombs going off.

So both stars die, but the Sun sized Earth dies much more spectacularly than the 1.3 million Earth sized Suns, and now we know!