I had posted my theories of love in another blog (at a site I no longer use) and 179 people viewed my post. I have copied and pasted their responses below my theories...
Theory:
The basis for love that males express towards females is actually sexual desire.
Evidence:
Women that are sexually attractive cause men to think about having sex with them. This results in agony if the act of sex is not fulfilled. The desire to have sex also makes a man think about a woman he wants much more. This extra thinking beyond sexual acts is interpreted as love.
This explains why a man can tell a woman he loves her after having known her for a brief period of time, such as two weeks. He interprets sexual desire as love and will desperately say anything to ameliorate the agony of unfulfilled sex.
Theory:
The word "love" is socially acceptable because no one understands it.
Evidence:
As Richard Feynman pointed out, people prefer to talk about things that no one understands, such as weather. The problem with sex is that it is well understood, so a man must be mysterious with a woman and say "I love you", rather than "I want to have sex with you".
Theory:
Love at first sight is simply immediate sexual desire.
Evidence:
Males vigorously respond to visual stimuli, so this is why they can "love" a woman without having ever talked to her, without knowing a single thing about her personality.
3 blog users agreed with me...
TessRB: Wow, the theory is correct.
zoe_tm_03: I seemed to agree...
annathology: I hate to say this...but you seem right.
One user quoted me and disagreed...
Quoting justine4u:Love at first sight is simply immediate sexual desire. _ This is not love at all but LUST.
And I responded...
But lust can happen all of the time, even with men and women that are very familiar with one another.
What I was trying to say is that a man can "think" he loves a woman immediately by mistaking sexual desire for love. While this may also be referred to as lust, that same man could lust for the woman even after having had her 1,000 times. This implies that a man can continually lust for a woman that he claims to love, which contradicts the "first sight" uniqueness of lust.
On the other hand, a man can love a woman without feeling the need to have sex with her. In that case, sexual desire is not love. But actual "love", whatever that is. Some kind of emotional bond, currently understood by every individual but not defined by science.
I may not seem like it, but I am a human.
- Bryan Singleton
- United States
- This blog contains some of my philosophical writings and various other things.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Gordon Eklund
As far as I know, all of Gordon Eklund's science fiction is OOP. It's neither expensive nor difficult to find his fiction, although it does require the use of ebay or abebooks. The reason why I started reading Eklund is because I read that his writing is similar to that of Michael G. Coney's. I can verify that that is correct.
I've read two of his novels so far:
The Eclipse of Dawn is his first novel and it's very smoothly written, with a huge focus on human interactions. I was impressed by the clear writing style and the consistently realistic interactions of the characters. This is not action oriented science fiction, nor are there spaceships or mind-stretching physics phenomena involved. This is a story about promises and wishful thinking. I would call this "psychological science fiction".
A Trace of Dreams has the same clarity of writing and focus on realistic human interactions, but the setting is not on Earth. In fact, some of the people are living in quite primitive conditions, despite the fact the cover art shows immense structures. This is his second novel and is a bit more ambitious than the first.
None of Eklund's short fiction has been collected together. Instead, they are spread out in magazines and anthologies. Unlike his novels, his short fiction is pretty damned difficult to collect. I've only collected about 8 of his short stories. I am dreaming of NESFA or Subterranean offering his complete short fiction in one mega volume.
If you like Michael G. Coney or don't require much action in your reading, then Gordon Eklund is for you. Just be prepared to bid on auctions or buy from used book stores.
I've read two of his novels so far:
The Eclipse of Dawn is his first novel and it's very smoothly written, with a huge focus on human interactions. I was impressed by the clear writing style and the consistently realistic interactions of the characters. This is not action oriented science fiction, nor are there spaceships or mind-stretching physics phenomena involved. This is a story about promises and wishful thinking. I would call this "psychological science fiction".
A Trace of Dreams has the same clarity of writing and focus on realistic human interactions, but the setting is not on Earth. In fact, some of the people are living in quite primitive conditions, despite the fact the cover art shows immense structures. This is his second novel and is a bit more ambitious than the first.
None of Eklund's short fiction has been collected together. Instead, they are spread out in magazines and anthologies. Unlike his novels, his short fiction is pretty damned difficult to collect. I've only collected about 8 of his short stories. I am dreaming of NESFA or Subterranean offering his complete short fiction in one mega volume.
If you like Michael G. Coney or don't require much action in your reading, then Gordon Eklund is for you. Just be prepared to bid on auctions or buy from used book stores.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Two awesome books.
I finished reading A ZEPTOSPACE ODYSSEY a few days ago. It was published in January 2010 by Oxford University Press, which usually offers more advanced reading material for non-scientists. I would not recommend this as a first book about particle physics unless you are prepared to use supplemental material. In other words, this is not a light or casual read; one must work at this book in order to finish.
Here are some of the interesting facts I learned from this book:
-The prefix 'zepto' is derived from the Latin 'septem' and the 's' was changed to a 'z' in order to avoid duplication of symbols, since the 'second' already uses 's' as an abbreviation. 'Zepto' is a relatively new prefix, as it was invented in 1991. A zeptometer is one billionth of a billionth of a millimeter. Or, it is one million times smaller than the diameter of a proton. We actually have the ability to probe this fantastically small space.
-Leibniz (a contemporary of Isaac Newton) called atoms 'monads'. Philip K. Dick sometimes used the word 'monad' in his novels. Now I know where it came from.
-Cathode rays were originally thought to be electromagnetic radiation, but photons do not have charge.
-The atom was first split in 1897 by J.J. Thomson, since a fragment (the electron) was observed. Electrons (not photons) were determined to be cathode rays.
-The ratio between the size of the solar system (out to Neptune) and the diameter of the Sun is 6,000:1. The ratio between the size of an atom and its nucleus is 20,000:1. Thus, there is more empty space (relatively speaking) inside atoms than inside our solar system.
-Leo Szilard first thought of liberating atomic energy, due to the fact that neutrons don't ionize matter.
-The weak nuclear force transforms particles, while the electromagnetic force does not transform them.
-Subatomic particles are nothing but localizations of quantum field energy. An electron is not really a particle, but a lump of energy in a quantum field.
-The slow disintegration of some hadrons led to the property of strangeness. Strangeness is a property of particles, like charge or mass. It refers to unusually slow decays.
-The W bosons mediate the 'charged current' weak interaction, in which neutrinos transform into electrons. The Z boson mediates the 'neutral current' weak interaction, in which neutrinos retain their identities.
-The discovery of neutral currents provided evidence for electroweak unification.
-Less than 1% of particle accelerators are used for science research. The majority are used in hospitals.
-X-rays lose most of their energy close to the skin surface, causing more damage to healthy cells than hadron-based treatments. (This makes sense. X-rays do not have mass, but hadrons do.)
-A bent proton beam emits ten thousand billion times less radiation than an electron beam.
-It takes 20 minutes for a proton beam to reach 7 TeV.
-A proton beam consists of 2,808 bunches of 100 billion protons per bunch. Each bunch is separated by 10 meters. 100 billion protons weighs about a ten-trillionth of a gram.
-The full power of the beam can melt a 1,000 pound block of solid copper.
-Two main detectors are called ATLAS and CMS. Each consists of 4 structures: 1. trackers 2. electromagnetic calorimeters 3. hadron calorimeters 4. muon chambers
-One million gigabytes of data are generated every second.
-Soft events are when the quarks and gluons inside a proton do not collide with those inside another proton.
-Hard events are when quarks or gluons have direct head-on hits.
-The GRID was invented to handle the enormous amount of data, which is a vast network of processing power.
-Symmetry in the subatomic world refers to invariance under a transformation of particles. For example, the strong force is symmetric, since it does not distinguish between protons and neutrons.
-The configuration inside a superconductor spontaneously breaks the gauge symmetry associated with electromagnetism, giving mass to the photon. Photons are impeded in their motion and they can propagate the electromagnetic force only within a short range, behaving like massive force carriers.
-The Higgs mechanism contributes less than a kilogram of mass to the average person.
-The Higgs substance becomes much less dense at temperatures exceeding one quadrillion degrees.
-Nature saves energy by filling space with the Higgs substance, rather than leaving it empty.
-Present understanding of matter and forces is based on 3 elements: 1. general relativity (gravity) 2. Yang-Mills gauge theory (strong, weak, composition of matter) 3. Higgs sector (spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry)
-The masses of quarks accounts for 1% of proton and neutron masses.
-98% of the mass of hadrons comes from the motion of quarks and gluons (binding force of QCD)
-Electromagnetic effects account for the other 1%.
-Higgs mechanism generates the quark masses, but not the QCD effect
-Higgs mechanism accounts for 1% of the mass of ordinary matter, or 0.2% of the mass of the universe.
-Electromagnetic waves are purely transverse, because the electric and magnetic fields oscillate only in directions perpendicular to the direction of motion.
-Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck invented the concept of particle spin in 1925.
-The rate of particle spin never changes, like electric charge.
-The 3 coupling constants become nearly equal at 10^-32 meters, which is beyond what can be explored at the LHC. It would be like using regular binoculars to spot molecules on the surface of the moon.
-Gravitational red shift is not the same as Doppler red shift. Gravitational red shift refers to the increase in wavelength of light as it loses energy during its escape from a star.
-On the scale of the universe, 3000 billion complete LHC programs are occurring every second.
-INFLATION: In 10^-35 seconds, the universe expanded by a factor of 10^30, which is equivalent to a 20 nanometer virus expanding into a creature with a diameter of 2.2 million light years in the time it takes light to cross a few millionths of a zeptometer. (How awesome is that?)
-Our technology can peer no further back than 380,000 years after inflation, due to the background temperature exceeding 2700 degrees Celsius, which is like a brick wall to electromagnetic radiation. Thus, the early universe is 'opaque' to our current telescopes.
-Experiments must be sensitive to 10^-19 watts in order to detect dark matter.
-The 72% estimate for dark energy comes from observations of supernovae and data from the cosmic microwave background.
-Due to the expansion of space, nothing beyond the solar system will be visible 500 billion years from now. (Like it will matter.)
Funny quotes the author provided:
"Communication is established between humans here on earth and extraterrestrials living in a galaxy made of antimatter. It is found that in that anti-world they have anti-science, anti-mathematics, and anti-physics. Earthbound physicists get a description of an anti-physics anti-laboratory, and lo and behold, they find it is filled with anti-Semites."
-Peter Freund
"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
-Albert Einstein
"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."
-Bertrand Russell
"There is no law except the law that there is no law."
-John Wheeler
The second book I recently finished is titled GATHER YOURSELVES TOGETHER. It was written sometime between 1949-1951 by Philip K. Dick and is his first novel. It was not published until 1994, a full 12 years after his death.
Here are some of the interesting facts I learned from this book:
-The prefix 'zepto' is derived from the Latin 'septem' and the 's' was changed to a 'z' in order to avoid duplication of symbols, since the 'second' already uses 's' as an abbreviation. 'Zepto' is a relatively new prefix, as it was invented in 1991. A zeptometer is one billionth of a billionth of a millimeter. Or, it is one million times smaller than the diameter of a proton. We actually have the ability to probe this fantastically small space.
-Leibniz (a contemporary of Isaac Newton) called atoms 'monads'. Philip K. Dick sometimes used the word 'monad' in his novels. Now I know where it came from.
-Cathode rays were originally thought to be electromagnetic radiation, but photons do not have charge.
-The atom was first split in 1897 by J.J. Thomson, since a fragment (the electron) was observed. Electrons (not photons) were determined to be cathode rays.
-The ratio between the size of the solar system (out to Neptune) and the diameter of the Sun is 6,000:1. The ratio between the size of an atom and its nucleus is 20,000:1. Thus, there is more empty space (relatively speaking) inside atoms than inside our solar system.
-Leo Szilard first thought of liberating atomic energy, due to the fact that neutrons don't ionize matter.
-The weak nuclear force transforms particles, while the electromagnetic force does not transform them.
-Subatomic particles are nothing but localizations of quantum field energy. An electron is not really a particle, but a lump of energy in a quantum field.
-The slow disintegration of some hadrons led to the property of strangeness. Strangeness is a property of particles, like charge or mass. It refers to unusually slow decays.
-The W bosons mediate the 'charged current' weak interaction, in which neutrinos transform into electrons. The Z boson mediates the 'neutral current' weak interaction, in which neutrinos retain their identities.
-The discovery of neutral currents provided evidence for electroweak unification.
-Less than 1% of particle accelerators are used for science research. The majority are used in hospitals.
-X-rays lose most of their energy close to the skin surface, causing more damage to healthy cells than hadron-based treatments. (This makes sense. X-rays do not have mass, but hadrons do.)
-A bent proton beam emits ten thousand billion times less radiation than an electron beam.
-It takes 20 minutes for a proton beam to reach 7 TeV.
-A proton beam consists of 2,808 bunches of 100 billion protons per bunch. Each bunch is separated by 10 meters. 100 billion protons weighs about a ten-trillionth of a gram.
-The full power of the beam can melt a 1,000 pound block of solid copper.
-Two main detectors are called ATLAS and CMS. Each consists of 4 structures: 1. trackers 2. electromagnetic calorimeters 3. hadron calorimeters 4. muon chambers
-One million gigabytes of data are generated every second.
-Soft events are when the quarks and gluons inside a proton do not collide with those inside another proton.
-Hard events are when quarks or gluons have direct head-on hits.
-The GRID was invented to handle the enormous amount of data, which is a vast network of processing power.
-Symmetry in the subatomic world refers to invariance under a transformation of particles. For example, the strong force is symmetric, since it does not distinguish between protons and neutrons.
-The configuration inside a superconductor spontaneously breaks the gauge symmetry associated with electromagnetism, giving mass to the photon. Photons are impeded in their motion and they can propagate the electromagnetic force only within a short range, behaving like massive force carriers.
-The Higgs mechanism contributes less than a kilogram of mass to the average person.
-The Higgs substance becomes much less dense at temperatures exceeding one quadrillion degrees.
-Nature saves energy by filling space with the Higgs substance, rather than leaving it empty.
-Present understanding of matter and forces is based on 3 elements: 1. general relativity (gravity) 2. Yang-Mills gauge theory (strong, weak, composition of matter) 3. Higgs sector (spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry)
-The masses of quarks accounts for 1% of proton and neutron masses.
-98% of the mass of hadrons comes from the motion of quarks and gluons (binding force of QCD)
-Electromagnetic effects account for the other 1%.
-Higgs mechanism generates the quark masses, but not the QCD effect
-Higgs mechanism accounts for 1% of the mass of ordinary matter, or 0.2% of the mass of the universe.
-Electromagnetic waves are purely transverse, because the electric and magnetic fields oscillate only in directions perpendicular to the direction of motion.
-Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck invented the concept of particle spin in 1925.
-The rate of particle spin never changes, like electric charge.
-The 3 coupling constants become nearly equal at 10^-32 meters, which is beyond what can be explored at the LHC. It would be like using regular binoculars to spot molecules on the surface of the moon.
-Gravitational red shift is not the same as Doppler red shift. Gravitational red shift refers to the increase in wavelength of light as it loses energy during its escape from a star.
-On the scale of the universe, 3000 billion complete LHC programs are occurring every second.
-INFLATION: In 10^-35 seconds, the universe expanded by a factor of 10^30, which is equivalent to a 20 nanometer virus expanding into a creature with a diameter of 2.2 million light years in the time it takes light to cross a few millionths of a zeptometer. (How awesome is that?)
-Our technology can peer no further back than 380,000 years after inflation, due to the background temperature exceeding 2700 degrees Celsius, which is like a brick wall to electromagnetic radiation. Thus, the early universe is 'opaque' to our current telescopes.
-Experiments must be sensitive to 10^-19 watts in order to detect dark matter.
-The 72% estimate for dark energy comes from observations of supernovae and data from the cosmic microwave background.
-Due to the expansion of space, nothing beyond the solar system will be visible 500 billion years from now. (Like it will matter.)
Funny quotes the author provided:
"Communication is established between humans here on earth and extraterrestrials living in a galaxy made of antimatter. It is found that in that anti-world they have anti-science, anti-mathematics, and anti-physics. Earthbound physicists get a description of an anti-physics anti-laboratory, and lo and behold, they find it is filled with anti-Semites."
-Peter Freund
"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
-Albert Einstein
"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."
-Bertrand Russell
"There is no law except the law that there is no law."
-John Wheeler
The second book I recently finished is titled GATHER YOURSELVES TOGETHER. It was written sometime between 1949-1951 by Philip K. Dick and is his first novel. It was not published until 1994, a full 12 years after his death.
This is not a science fiction novel, but one of his realistic novels which focuses on a small group of people. Usually, they are miserable, just like real people. In this novel, 3 American workers are left behind after a company in China has gone bankrupt. Two of them are connected in an unusual way, while the third is supposed to be PKD himself. This is a haunting novel and very well written, considering he was younger than 25 when he wrote it. There are certain things I will never forget, especially the dialogue between the Chinese scout and the Americans.
Friday, January 14, 2011
More Good Korean Movies.
Here are some I've watched relatively recently (within the past year) that are excellent.
The first scan is from Thirsty, Thirsty. The original Korean title is Give Me Water. I've watched Thirsty, Thirsty 5 or 6 times just within the past year. It's a directorial debut and won the Best New Director Award in Asia. The story involves debt collecting and its intricacies, with more humor than is reasonable.
The second scan is from Plastic Tree. It is fortunate I have seen so many Korean movies. Before watching this movie, it is worth it to watch Plum Blossom and The Day a Pig Fell into the Well. I won't explain why, but you'll know why. I found this for $4 at the now defunct DVD From Korea website, and it was a bargain indeed. This movie completely blew me away. Don't worry about the cover; there is no possible way one can predict what will happen. This is an example of why Korean Cinema is numero uno.
The second scan is from Plastic Tree. It is fortunate I have seen so many Korean movies. Before watching this movie, it is worth it to watch Plum Blossom and The Day a Pig Fell into the Well. I won't explain why, but you'll know why. I found this for $4 at the now defunct DVD From Korea website, and it was a bargain indeed. This movie completely blew me away. Don't worry about the cover; there is no possible way one can predict what will happen. This is an example of why Korean Cinema is numero uno.
This third scan is from Love Her. Not "Lover". But "Love Her". Wow, was this a masterpiece. If you want to see the complete psychological breakdown (the downward spiral) of a person, then look no further. A movie like this explains why some men say "All women are crazy.". I loved the soundtrack, too.
Separation of body and mind.
I believe that the body and the mind are distinct from one another.
As an example, your body can receive considerable damage while leaving the mind intact. Also, your mind can be completely deranged while your body is pristine.
Because of my belief, I am in support of any future technologies that can transfer and store human consciousness on a substrate other than our carbon-based brains. My belief horrifies many religious people, that is, those that believe in souls.
A girl I know hates the notion of storing human consciousness on a computer because it conflicts with her religious beliefs. But consider the advantages...
Let's say that a 9 year old girl has been shot and killed. With our current technology, that girl is permanently dead. In the future, death might be a temporary inconvenience.
Now take that same 9 year old girl that has been killed. Imagine that her mind is backed up on a computer and a new body can be cloned. To her, being shot and killed would be a minor annoyance, since she could transfer a back-up of her consciousness into a new body and continue living. Even religious people would probably agree that such technology could be beneficial, especially when facing their own deaths.
I do not believe that humans have souls, so I have no problem with storing consciousness on a computer, since it's simply an emergent property of connected neurons. There is no reason why consciousness requires biological neurons. A sufficiently advanced silicon substrate could do the same thing.
Since I don't believe that humans have souls, what do I believe we have? Consciousness. That's what I know for sure. I am conscious. I'm not so sure about YOU.
You'll have to excuse my solipsism, but the problem with souls is that I don't see how they can explain anything that is not already a part of consciousness. Although I feel that shaving with Occam's Razor is trite, I am using it to get rid of the soul.
The conscience, feelings, individuality, personality, fears, scruples (or lack thereof), etc. are parts of consciousness. People that believe in souls are unnecessarily complicating the otherwise straightforward notion of consciousness by claiming there is something that is separate from it other than the body.
As an example, your body can receive considerable damage while leaving the mind intact. Also, your mind can be completely deranged while your body is pristine.
Because of my belief, I am in support of any future technologies that can transfer and store human consciousness on a substrate other than our carbon-based brains. My belief horrifies many religious people, that is, those that believe in souls.
A girl I know hates the notion of storing human consciousness on a computer because it conflicts with her religious beliefs. But consider the advantages...
Let's say that a 9 year old girl has been shot and killed. With our current technology, that girl is permanently dead. In the future, death might be a temporary inconvenience.
Now take that same 9 year old girl that has been killed. Imagine that her mind is backed up on a computer and a new body can be cloned. To her, being shot and killed would be a minor annoyance, since she could transfer a back-up of her consciousness into a new body and continue living. Even religious people would probably agree that such technology could be beneficial, especially when facing their own deaths.
I do not believe that humans have souls, so I have no problem with storing consciousness on a computer, since it's simply an emergent property of connected neurons. There is no reason why consciousness requires biological neurons. A sufficiently advanced silicon substrate could do the same thing.
Since I don't believe that humans have souls, what do I believe we have? Consciousness. That's what I know for sure. I am conscious. I'm not so sure about YOU.
You'll have to excuse my solipsism, but the problem with souls is that I don't see how they can explain anything that is not already a part of consciousness. Although I feel that shaving with Occam's Razor is trite, I am using it to get rid of the soul.
The conscience, feelings, individuality, personality, fears, scruples (or lack thereof), etc. are parts of consciousness. People that believe in souls are unnecessarily complicating the otherwise straightforward notion of consciousness by claiming there is something that is separate from it other than the body.
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