The two kinds of thought

Here I go again.  

    I feel, that all human thought, can be categorized into two types.  My claim is that this post will be valuable too you because, when we learn the two categories of human thought, we can more clearly understand human conflicts.  With that understanding, we will fear human conflicts less, and navigate them to a peaceful resolution more efficiently.  That is my claim, however honestly, I never really know if my theories are true or not, so just read them and listen to experts, as sharing ideas about sensitive topics like this is problematic, so believe other people, I encourage no one to take me seriously.  

    Here is the short, short version of this theory: all human thought fits into what I call the dreamer category, or the constructionist category.  The names are not important.  I will define what I mean with these words:

Dreamer: believing in something without worrying about the certainty if it being true. 

Constructionist: Believing in something only when it is well known and established.

    I've been thinking about this one for years.  Everyone uses both of these attributes of thought, however it's common to have one dominate over the other in most human beings.  Rarely do you meet someone who has both of them in a close balance.  

    Here is an example.  An example of a dreamer, would be an artist.  An artist doesn't need to understand why they create art, they just do it.  Also, they don't always need to understand what their creation is going to be when they start their project.  They have just learned to trust in their creative process, even without fully knowing the final outcome.  They don't need to justify their art, and somehow prove that it will be useful, they just do it, and they will know what it is, after they know what it is.  

    The constructionist doesn't like to work without a good understanding of how something will work, and thus will have a good understanding of what the outcome will be.  They trust in a creative process that is commonly done, and well understood.  They don't like to take chances, because they want the result to be correct.  An example of a profession that is dominantly filled with constructionist thinking is a school principle, or most engineers.  Managers often think mostly in constructionist terms.  To indulge in the unknown would mean unknown outcomes.  To this mode of thinking, dreamer thinking is wasteful, and possibly dangerous, and a lot of the time it is right.

    Where dreams often look at constructionists, and simply wrong, and/or limited in their perspective.  

    Both modes of thinking are not bad or wrong despite how they view each other.  Rather they both serve a different purpose.  The most important thing to understand is to have an increase capability created that didn't exist before, both disciplines of thought are needed.  

    One to step outside of what is known, and they other to correct for errors that will happen, because the unknown has been entered.  

    They both need each other, but they operate so differently, they will see each other as wrong.  Both types of thought have the same goal, which is survival, yet their methods of obtaining survival are so different, they they often believe the other is an enemy.  People who are dominate in one type or the other, are often very strong feeling about their way of thinking, and when others have a different way, it will seem like the other people just don't understand like they do.   

    So they don't get along sometimes.  In the past few years, the political dialog has become more contentious because of people loosing a balance within themselves with the two ways of thinking.  If someone becomes too abscessed with one way of thinking over the other, that is how extremism in belief systems is constructed.    They may be motivated to create the imbalance in hopes of solving the problem behind their pain.   But the ideas they come up with, come from a desperate imbalance of thought.  

    Constructionist thoughts are when we use real experience and logical reasoning to arrive at a conclusion.  Where as dreamer thoughts, like dreams themselves have no required logic or experience.  In fact, dreamer thoughts importantly leave logic out.  Logic would mean that the thoughts would have boundaries.  And moving beyond boundaries is what dreamer thoughts are all about.  That doesn't mean they are meant to endanger us with reckless behavior, constructionist or dreamer thoughts can be both be reckless or saver.  Dreamer thoughts instead, are used to help us image what we can't image, because we have not imaged them yet.  In order to image what we have not yet imaged, we have to get messy, and do things that may be described as silly, or based on feelings not logic, or just non-sense.  To be honest, a lot of dreamer thoughts are non-sense, and have no value.  Dreamer thoughts don't have to be right, they just need to go somewhere new.  

    So what often happens, is that many people who are dominate in the dreamer side of thought, all start to reinvent something important in the world.  All of them take great risks, and abandon prior conceptions, and attempt to do something different.  Most of them fail, some of them fail with severe consequences, but a few strike upon something that works, and begin to change the world.  They always run unto a common problem however.  Their dreamer thought process, brought them to success, yet to manage the success, they will need help.  This is where the constructionists will arrive and organize and update the new invention.  They likely didn't believe in the risks, but now with the discovery that was made, and the success from it clearly proven, they are believers now, and are ready to help.  

    Eventually the new discovery is gradually taken over, going from dreamer control to constructionist control.  This might seem like a bad story for the dreamer, and it may be to some extent.  But for this to work, they often need a constructionist at some point.  Someone with a more practical approach.  

    Have you the reader, ever heard a person say, "What is real for one person, may not be real for another."  This idea that truth changes for each person is a common explanation from my experience.  I have a different outlook of what truth is.  When people say "true for you..." in my mind, we are really talking about our ability to interpret what we experience and assign meaning to it, in order to help us make choices in our lives.  How we interpret what is happening in our lives, will modify our choices we make in the future.   But what truth is, goes beyond our understanding, it's how the universe really is.  The universe is endlessly complex.  All these forces and atoms interact in such a way that makes one outcome happen over another, to me that is what truth is.  That is truth to me.  It's how things really are, not our attempt to understand what they really are.  There is not a truth for you, and a truth for me.  But, here is the positive side to this argument: our different ways of thinking are useful not because they help individuals find truth, they are helpful because they help us find the truth by working together.  

    When one person dreams and the other constructs, they form a symbiotic relationship, that is a slam dunk to survival success, and legitimate prosperity.    

    From my point of view, men and women are commonly given traits by nature that intentionally put them at odds with each other.  Rather then a design flaw, this I feel, is how our ancestors survived.  Men and women will tend to lean to one type of though in some areas and the other type of thought in other areas.  Men and women lean differently so that they fit together.  Women tend to show mercy toward the weak, while if people hurt the weak, they want strong justice.  Men tend to not show mercy toward the week, and prefer more mercy toward the strong.  All of that is very general, but if we fully examine men and women, I feel like more and more, we will find, that if men tend to be one thing, women tend to be the complimentary opposite.  In the end, love brings these two different minds together, then when the love spell begins to wear off, they in fact, need to start opposing each other, because either has all the answers, but together, they likely will have the best answers.  This doesn't mean they should fight, likely that will not bring the comprise they both need.  Rather, the disagree, and process to work it out in a way, that they both get a livable outcome.  

    Another example of this is in politics.  Yes, politics are not a great subject to talk about, but stay with me, I need to make a point.  I feel like American liberals tend to favor the dreamer mentality, and the American conservatives tend to favor the constructionist mentality.   This is why they don't get along very well.  This is why they clearly see the other as having poor judgement.  Because, of course you would think the other had bad judgement.  Because to love one over the other, means you believe one has better rewards then the other, so they thing, "why doesn't my opponent understand this?"  But I don't believe in loving one over the other.  I believe the only good rewards come when both types of thought come together to make something new, and possible.  

    The dreamers make new things, and the constructionists make new things possible, that is the symbolic relationship.  

    So, we are all in this journey of life, constantly confronted with problems that must be solved.  Our brain is capable of two kinds of thought, to help us.  We will use both of them, yet one will at times dominate our personality.  I feel, that if we listen to the lessons of life, we will learn over time to create a more equal balance in our own mind, and not think so harshly toward others, as they attempt to make the world better using a different thought process then ours.

    

What is Humor

     I'm going to try and make this post short.  In addition restate my purpose in this blog; I want a place where I can publish my thoughts and ideas.  Not to tell anyone what to believe, or what to do with their lives; just share thoughts.  Perhaps some things in my posts can have value for the reader, but I'm not in a position to successfully make conclusions on behalf of others.  So use your own brain, and use it well.

    I had a thought that really caused a sense of profoundness and mystery to me late one night.  It was an idea of what humor may be.  I was thinking about how intelligence is created when ideas are linked together.  This works in computer databases as well as in the mind of all living things that have a recognizable mind, in my opinion.  

    It's becoming more and more obvious to me that this is how the human mind works.  All the understanding we have inside our heads is a vast collection of related data.  When there is enough of this data linked together in just the right way, it forms what we call understanding.  

    If we think of an orange.  We can picture a round ball in our mind, with the orange color.  We can image the feel of the skin of the fruit.  We can think about the indentation where it once grew on a stem.  When we think of an orange, it appears to us in our mind as one complete thought.  But what is really happening, is that a chain of related concepts, have been grouped together and executed together.  The orange is round like a sphere, it has a color to it called orange, it has a outside skin, it has a smell, it has a place where we get oranges, a shop.  There are so many attributes of an orange.  All these attributes exist separately in our mind, yet when they are put together with links, our mind contains a concept of an orange.  If we have a good list of attributes in our mind linked together, our brain has a useful resource of information available.  Whenever it needs to know anything related to oranges.  

    When someone says to us, image an orange in our mind, we access the key reference in out mind to the orange.  Every concept I believe must have one key reference of some kind.  When this data point is executed, it will then reference all the linked data points.  When all the linked information is assembled it doesn't feel like a group of information, it feels like a complete picture. 

    I have before in previous posts written about what I call the mental model of something.  It's when we have created enough links about a subject or thing, to be able to get answers to questions we ask our model.  If I ask you what happens when a ping-pong ball is dropped into a pool of water, what would you say?  Perhaps "that it floats, and it wont make much of a splash."  If I then ask you what happens when a bowling ball is dropped into a pool of water.  Your answer would likely be, "it would make a big splash, and definitely would not float."  We can make these determinations in our brains, because we have a mental model for water, and the ping-pong ball, and bowling ball, and gravity, and inertia.  We can input data into each of these models, or algorithms, get output for each of them, then put all this output together.  What we get, is not perfect, flowless, and exact information, but we do get an answer.  Perhaps the slash of the bowling ball ended up being bigger then we thought it would be.  

    Simple attributes, are linked into larger clusters which made up a concept.  Concepts can then interact between difference concepts and what we have in the end is an intelligence that can adapt and survive in a complex world.  At least it can try too.  

    On a side note, I refer to models sometimes as algorithms.  Likely because I can't make up my mind on which word works best to describe what I'm trying to say.  So just a warning.  

    So where does humor fit into all of this?  Well, we are constantly trying to improve out mental models.  To do that we have to test them out, compare them to the mental models others have using conversations and books, etc.  We can have experiences that give us clues that our mental models need improvement, and we can make new links whenever we find that two things have a relation that we have found.  

    Some relations are very easy for us, others are more difficult, the point is that linking and unlinking happening a lot, and needs to happen a lot.  In order for our mind to help us navigate the world successfully, it must adapt correctly.  Which means that every time an important relationship is found between to things, it must create a link.  If it doesn't, our brain will miss an opportunity to improve it's capability, which might make an important difference in our survival.  

    There are other times when the brain will attempt to link two ideas, but then will not.  It will attempt to make the link, however it will find by using it's own logic, that the link is invalid.  Some things just don't have a valid relation.  The brain must only have valid links, invalid links will cause our brains to give us the wrong answer to the questions we give it.  

    So to link, or not to link, that is the question for our brain.  Sometimes we need to make the link to make our mind more accurate, and at times we should not make the link to make our mind more accurate.  This is what I thought about late one night months ago.  I was thinking about how each emotion control this linking and unlinking process, and when I thought about humor, I thought; what if this link was more unique then the rest?  What if a concept needed to be linked, but at the same time should not be linked?  What if the brain was caught between to opposing sets of logic that contradicted each other, yet they both were valid arguments to link and unlink.  

    Consider the major problem this dilemma brings to the human mind.  If it makes the link, it will have an invalid algorithm, and then get wrong results from running the algorithm.  If it doesn't make the link, then the algorithm is then incomplete and again will get the wrong result when running the algorithm.  

    So what is to be done?  Well, through the process of evolution our brains likely just created a link or didn't create a link, and didn't go further then that, but at some point in the evolutionary process of our intelligence, these contradictory links started to become valuable to us.  It became important to treat them differently.  What happened, is that humor was created.  

    The links had to be made, but with an important additional link to them.  Connecting them to our humor algorithm.  

    Have you ever heard, or saw something funny.  Laughed about it, then in remembering it later, laughed about it again?  I have.  Sometimes we laugh at something only once, sometimes we laugh again and again.  When we do this, our brain is enjoying a contradiction that is somehow desirable to our mind.  

    So to review, there are three actions our brain will do, when it finds related information.   The first is make the relation if it believes it's valid.  The second is reject the relation if it believes it's invalid.  The third is related it as an in between valid and invalid.  When our algorithm runs, it will run through all the links attached to it, yet when it gets to a humor link, it will not categorize it as truly belonging, yet it may stop and explore it for a quick laugh with a friend.

    Understand, I'm not claiming this is all true.  It's another one of my interesting and unproven thoughts.  It makes a whole lot of sense to me, and I've been thinking about it while hearing jokes, and I have to admit, it does kill the humor a bit when I'm focusing on analyzing humor instead of just enjoying it.  

    Yet, my mind is very much drawn to some ideas, and for the past while now, this has been on my mind a lot.  The part that I find most mysterious about this, is why would humor be so valuable in the first place?  Spotting these inconsistencies I think may play a big role in helping us understand what is real, and what just seems like it's real.  It may also help us by finding an alternative to finding meaning in things.  

    I feel like our brain has a strong need to assign meaning to everything that happens.  Sometimes humor is the only real meaning to make sense of some things.

    One last item I feel I need to discuss, is confusion.  Confusion and humor I think are different.  In confusion, there is a strong believe in our mind, that a link is either true or untrue.  Not that it's in a state between.  So we feel confused, because our algorithm doesn't seem to work with the link, or without the link.  Add to that, we don't have a third option that we have available for updating our algorithm of links.  The end results is confusion.  

    Humor doesn't have this lingering problem.  In humor a solution was found, and making the link in the algorithm but only as a humor link, that will also indicate it's invalid.   

    If there was more to deliberate on, then confusion would be the result, but humor is not the same as confusion.  It can look like confusion, but it's not the same I would argue.  We may have a thought that starts as confusion, then as we have time to process it, we discover something to laugh about.  In this scenario, we struggled to know if the correction was correct, then found to our surprise, it's humor, and it's time to laugh. 

    I would encourage anyone reading this to leave a comment in this blog.  Let me know what you think of this, and what your ideas are for this odd, and interesting thing called humor.    

  

    

    

What an idea is

    When I was a child, I played with toys.  So do most children.  There are many kinds of toys, and   games available.  When I was thinking about toys, games, and sports, and all things children enjoy for fun, a thought came to me.   Play often simulates something from adult life.  A child can pretend to be a mother or father, with baby dolls, or a truck driver with a toy truck.  Play is a smaller simpler version of something big and complex.  Children would find it very difficult to operate real machines or be a real parent in the adult world.  Yet though play, they can experiment with a simplified version of responsibility, struggle, and achievement, in the adult world.

    When children become adults, play continues; yet in a more sophisticated form.  Examples of grown up play could be an appreciation of sports, theater, standup comedy, or collecting toys instead of playing with them.    Play is an important part of learning.  What play is good or bad is a big subject.  I will not discuss the pros and cons of play, however it did lead me to my second thought.

    Play seems like an example of how all human understanding is.  Our mind will build a simplified version of something complex in our minds.  This simplified version is what we call our understanding.  Think about the logic of that.  If you could not fit the famous Titanic ship inside a museum, because the Titanic is too big, and too sunk.  An alternative would be to put a model of the ship inside the museum so visitors could see closely what the ship looked like.  When things don't fit, just scale it down, until it does.  

    Now I want to ask you a question.  Can most people imagine the Titanic in their minds?  I'm thinking that you will say yes to that question, especially if you have seen it in movies.  However, are you really imagining the ship with all his halls and doors, and all of structure and machinery?  What I would like to point out, is the information in our heads when we think of this ship is really just a list of attributes of it.  

    Many of the attributes in our mind about the Titanic, can be shared with other ships.  What a ship is, is a concept of a short list of attributes.  In a sense, a mental miniature model of a ship can exist in our minds.  We can refer to this mental concept, with all it's attached attributes when ever it needs to be recalled.  Our mental model of a ship is so good, we can instantly recognize a new kind of ship we have not seen before.  This mental model of what a ship is, can help us understand unique ships and normal ships.  The Titanic with his history is unique, because it has attributes that other ships don't have.  Like tragedy, and being new, and grand in size.  My point is that mental models in our minds of the things we know, help us understand things.  Like the subject of ships, and specific subject of a particular ship.  

    I believe that all intelligence comes down to data that is related to each other.  In a computer database, data is only useful when some meaning can be assigned to the data.  How that is done is simple.  One piece of a data is related to another piece of data.  So when the computer reads the data, it can also read the other related data too.  Some pieces of data should be related to each other, and some pieces should not be.  When all the relationships between data are setup, a database can return the piece of information and all its related data to be displayed together.  

    Here's an example.  A school database keeps track off all the students attending the school.  If in the database every student is listed by their name, and birthday, and a list of other important details.  You could search for todays date, and it would return all the names of students that have a birthday on todays date.  This is easy because the database has a relation between a persons name and the day they where born. 

    Our brain has created so many relationships that we can navigate this world.  As we find something new that we don't understand, our brain will start making relationships with that thing.  We may have to study what we don't understand, or play, or compare it to what we already know, but with time, we can build a list of attributes.  

    The universe is so big, and so complex.  Our brains would likely need an infinite number of neurons to understand the vastness of the universe.  So our brains employ a brilliant short cut.  It simply makes a model in our mind, that is much simpler.  Our brain wants our model to be as accurate as possible.  So it's careful about getting the right attributes.

    Here is my main point.  We can believe, and know something, that is completely wrong.  How?  Because our models are limited.  They have to be.  We can only hope to improve them, not have them work without flaw. 

    Think about the game pool.  A human can tap a ball with a stick, and that ball can hit other balls which hopefully nocks them into the pockets.  A really great player can hit several balls in sequence, just as they predicted.  A normal player will often need several turns to finish the game.  We humans have limits to what we can mentally accomplish, and those limits keep us from truly understanding what is happening around us.  Like pool, we just can't make every shot perfect, nor plan every shot perfectly.  And if we can't be perfect, then what can we have?  The answer is, we can have a limited model of the truth that at least partially replicate and predict the truth.  A limited model may be correct at least some of the time.  To become an expert we have to spend a lot of time failing, also known as practicing.  

    What our brain can do, is give us a model of what the universe is.  Our mind, can't comprehend the number of atoms in the universe, or all the ways in which forces, matter and energy may interact.  Even if we understood the universe fully, it would be impossible for us to calculate the interactions of the universe fully enough to predict the results of every action.    

    So rather then do the impossible and create a perfect model to represent reality, we create a limited model to represent what we understand of reality.  Our limited model changes a great deal over time.  Sometimes, we need experiences that help us improve our models, other times, we must rely on others teaching us from their experiences.  Because it's a process, and not an instant success, this is what confusion, and cognitive dissonance, and conflicting ideas all come from.  

    Morality is so important, yet people have different ideas on what morality is.  Scientists debate what is true and untrue about the universe.  We each have our own models, and other people have theirs.  Sometimes different people will have very similar models, and other times, different people will have models that contradict each other.  

    In fact what is more odd, is that two people with conflicting models may be useful in different situations.   It is unwise to be so certain as to who has the best model.  Some people will have a model that predicts one situation well, and another person's model may be capable of predicting another.  Having a team of people with different models may make the team more effective, as where one person can understand a situation they may struggle with another.  

    This is how people can believe such different things, yet be so confident of their position.  Our models can also have false data in them.  Relationships between attributes that are not relationships.  In fact I believe that our brains are supposed to have errors in these models.  Why?  Because to learn, getting messy is often necessary.   

    I'm not saying its good to have incorrect information in our mental models, but I am trying to say that our brain hazards possible bad data a lot.  In the end, our brain hopes that most of this bad data will eventually be figured out as wrong, and removed.  The brain does not want to risk being idol.  It eagerly makes one idea related to another, using personal experience, and what others are teaching us, it does this so eagerly that incorrect ideas will eventually be fitted into our mental models of our understanding.  To cope with these incorrect related ideas, our brain will often work on the model.  This is part of the reason why we dream, to work on our models, to test them out within the dream simulation of our mind.  Eventually in the laboratory of our mind, we may reflect differently on our mental models and change them.  

    A second way errors are removed is by copying mental models from others.  As we come to know people that we trust and admire, we will consciously or unconsciously adopt their models.  This is how people follow political and religious leaders.    

    I don't believe people are mindless robots, who follow others, and don't think for themselves.  But I do think people have all the mental equipment in their heads to accomplish that.  

    As much as independent thought is a good thing, the truth I feel, is that it's hard to deny that people often have wrong conclusions.  Gaining good working mental models from people that have put a lot of effort into fixing and updating their mental models, is a positive thing.  I just hope we always pick people with good working models to follow, and not people with very wrong ones.  

    We should love natures shortcuts in our brain.  Without them, I doubt that intelligence for us would be possible at all.  What makes the human brain so different from other species may not be our brain size, but rather how well build these mental models.  

    What should we do with this knowledge?  That is up to you, what it has done for my mind, is that it has given a reason why I should not be arrogant, and believe that I'm at the end of learning.  Our models can't represent reality, their only ability is to approximate reality, as best as possible.  May we stop thinking we have reached the finish line in learning, and build our mental models together.   

    

    

Balance and Chaos; Creation and Destruction

    Balance.  All things that exist, exist because of a balance.  All things that die, die because of a loss of balance.  It's a principle governing the universe.   We can see this everywhere, including physics, biology, and human interaction.  

    When apposing forces are locked in a struggle for dominance, their opposing struggle forms a balance, and the right balance will become the catalyst for creation, and success of that creation.  As long as neither side over powers the other the two will exist, and create something from their struggle.  

    Yes, this is another theory, and we should all know that a theory is an explanation that may or may not be true.  It's another idea, I just can't keep out of my head, there is something about it that keeps drawing me back to it.  

    The sun sustains all life on earth. The sun burns because of a balance of forces, the force of gravity pushing inward, and the force produced by nuclear reactions pushing outward. The sun will keep this balance going for a long, long time, but eventually the sun will explode when the forces in the sun loose this balance.

    In order for planets to orbit the sun, the orbit must be at the correct angle, too steep or two shallow the planet would fall into the sun, or be lost into deep space. The planets that we see in the night sky, had the correct angle to their motion, and thus keep their occupation of the sky. Without this correct angle, objects would fall into the sun, or be lost out into space.

    So how long something can exist, is a matter of how long the balance can be kept, before it becomes imbalanced.

    Our bodies require salt, but too much salt, too much would lead to illness or death. We require heat, but not too much heat. Air pressure, but not too much air pressure. We require light to see, but not too much light or we would be forced to shield our eyes.

    I feel, that if we deeply looked around us, we would find that everything requires some amount of balance to exist. Without that balance, it's existence would be brief. All the things that become renewed or preserved with time, keep this balance as closely as possible.

    There are two states in the universe for all things, balance and unbalance. For a thing to be created and for it to last, a balance must be made. For a thing to be destroyed an unbalance must be made.

    Another interesting balance, is the balance needed in human society. A balance of ideas. A balance of views. A balance of power, and one of my favorites, a balance of ambition and modesty. If people can find a balance then success will be created. When a society becomes out of balance, it will create conflict and failure to a point that is eventually unsustainable. So many civilizations have disappeared through time, and I feel like each will have explanations of how one or more unbalances grew too to the point of causing their collapse.

    Even with the thoughts in our minds we must have balance. Conflicting desires are common in humans and all life that has to make decisions. Conflicting desires in our minds must find a balance for us to be capable of sustainable choices.

    While groups of people can debate, we can also have an internal debate in our own mind, and we often do.

    The main reason why I wanted to write about this, is because I feel like one of the balances we over look, is the need for opposing argument in our believe systems. We has human beings have limited abilities to understand things, even things we firmly believe we do understand. I'm not saying we can't be confident, but I am saying we can be confident that we humans are often wrong. Wrong about facts, wrong when judging other people, wrong when judging results from an experiment.     

    If we let ourselves think, we can help to improve our own beliefs and ideas. Ideas are easy to make, and hard to refine. Without using balance in how we consider all points of view, we can't refine our ideas. If our ideas are the lasting ones, the ones that survive despite all the opposition against them, then they can be used as a secure foundation for our systems of belief. New ideas have not had time to work out their imperfections, and may be unsafe to use as a foundation. I use the "may", as there is always uncertainty, but wisdom needs time, it needs experience, it needs to be tested against the oppositions it faces.

    If an idea comes from philosophers of any sort, however new and interesting it may be, until it becomes tested against the stresses of reality, it can't be truly understood. It's the difference between theory and practice. With balance, the things that survive and provide long term success are the ones that find a better balance.

    To make this post more meaningful, and less vague, I will list some of the opposing things, that are important to find a balance with.

• mercy and justice.
• suffering and pleasure.
• new ideas and old ideas.
• kindness and self preservation.
• humility and conquest
• logic and feelings
• sentimentality and ambition
• facts and intuition

    Some of the items I listed may seem very dangerous and negative, like conquest, or intuition over facts. The point I'm attempting to make is that these must be in balance, not on their own. Humility is good and peaceful, but a sense of conquest is needed to make a difference, yet if the drive for conquest is too great, then we may loose perspective on the real good and selflessness of our sense of conquest. Facts are so important, but there are times when using our intuition may lead to something good that the facts couldn't show us. Yet to ignore facts and embrace intuition too much may lead to us knowingly putting ourselves in harms way. An imbalance of obsession with just one of any of these items without it's opposite will create an unrealistic situation which will lead to brief success, followed by destruction, and loss.

    People all the time argue, and debate, that make points and counter points. The struggle to all get along is very difficult much of the time, for most societies. People can get along, they can find a balance of opinions, but that balance is going to have to include a greater balance inside ourselves, in our own beliefs. One extreme temperament must be balanced with another. Otherwise we are at risk of becoming emotionally entrapped by our own unbalanced passions. To embrace a balance of thought would cause us to gain the prize humans seek the most, mental growth.

  

    

Evolution verses Creationism

    One of the epic showdowns in the common culture conflicts is the disagreement on the origin of humanity.  This show down is the theory of evolution verses the theory of creationism by religion.  This battle started when Charles Darwin published "The Origin of species" in the year 1859, which taught a theory that all the diversity of life comes from living things mutating through generations, and natural selection of the most well adapted surviving to repeat the process.  In short, what works lives, and what doesn't dies, and over time living things change.  Because the earth is so big, with may different climates and regions there is lots of room for species to separate to different populations and mutate into different creatures, even very different creatures over time.  

    This theory, as the reader likely knows, came into conflict, as the explanation of how the world had been created, had already been told.  If there is one thing that commonly triggers human bias the most, it's likely being told that you are wrong.  Naturally, many people rejected the theory, in favor of what felt right to them, creationism.  

    At this point, I wish to show the arguments both sides have in this debate, I will attempt to be non-bias towards both sides as much as I am able. 

    In evolution, there is a long list of evidences that support the theory.  The fossils recovered from the ground seem to show creatures slowly changing over time.  Sexual reproduction seems to be designed to speed up evolutionary process.  The theory explains why so many creatures have similarities, in form and behavior, as change happens gradually and only with necessity.  It's easy to point out impossibilities in various theories of creationism, according to what is understood in science. Evolutionary scientists look at the world, and think, all clues point to the same answer, accidents that work, survive and create a world like this.  

    In creationism, evidence is not what is important, religion is a matter of intuition with faith to fill in what can't be understood.  Creationists point out, to truly know something is impossible, faith, in other words a trust in something that must be used.  Likely one of the best arguments creationists have, is that the universe is such a wonderous place.  Our human heart feels that some grand design must be behind it in some way, to them, that is evidence.  And the various creation theories all have this focus on purpose, not chance, or accident.  Creationists look at the world, and think, how could it all just be, without some force of intelligence to make it so.  

    So both groups believe they are right.  Some from either group even may villainize the other.  Our natural human instinct will push us to distrust and even hate people who think or believe differently then us.  I have seen creationists that distrusted the scientific community because of this, and I have even seen some scientists that have seen religion has an enemy, that is dangerous.  To be honest, with my own experiences, scientist tend to be the more mature, and patent ones in this debate, however there can be exceptions to this.  

    There is always danger, in villainizing those who act differently, look differently, or believe differently.  Extreme believes can grow in any group, because deep in us, is the emotional components of a warrior ready to fight and crusade against the enemy.   The right thing to do in an argument is to put off our natural selves.  We do this with mental exercise and by exposing ourselves to good influences that help us break from these impulses.  Stay away from angry mods, instead look for quiet discussions where both sides are allowed to speak, and both sides give effort to listen.  

    It never impresses me, when I see a person, however right they may be on a subject, dominate with anger over their foe.  If people are in physical danger, then anger can be helpful for that situation, but those situations are rare, and are only for real battlefields after humanity has already lost it's self, not the debates that hold civilization together.  I've been angry in debates before, and I find no joy in my personal history related to those moments.  I suppose this is a lesson that every deep thinking person will have to grow into.  Deep thoughts require deep control of our animal instincts that would have us kept as primitive people.  There are parts of our natural selves that are good to use, and parts that should give way to our ability to reason, and discipline.  Hate is one of these natural impulses, that will cloud our judgement.  

    I have witnessed many debates, some of them even good ones.  I have gone back and forth on this issue myself, and have arrived at the conclusion I will now give.  Both sides may not like my opinion.

    To supervise my conclusion.  I believe religion has never really had much in the way of evidence.  This has always been true, but people will often accept what is confidently taught to them, so the lack of evidence never was much of a problem.  Then came science, which said belief should be based on observation of evidence, not on what seems right, or feels right.  So does this mean, science wins?  No, like it or not, there is no clear winner in this case, because neither side has thought this through enough.

    This is what I mean.  To all those who believe in creationism, I say, evolution is the greatest evidence for the existence of God that has ever been confidently accepted.  More on that later.  Religion is not proven because ancient books are old.  To be fair, being old doesn't disprove them either.  To the religious I ask, if some of you dislike science or scientists, why?  How do you know that God is not a scientist?  God may very well enjoy this discipline of humanity, after all, if God created the universe, or a part of it, then it sounds like a scientist may be able to talk shop with God at some level of understanding.   I don't mean to offend those with religion, what I mean to point out, is that thinking, however limited, is better when it's controlled like science is.  It should be religions best friend, not an enemy.  

    Is not all of the universe a religious text in a way, cannot we know understand the maker a bit more, by understand the makers crafts?  If science gives us even a small amount of additional understand of this vast universe, then would we not examine closely this new understanding, just like sacred texts.   If God is the source of all truth?  Then wouldn't truth however it was found, as long as it was truth, be holy?  

    To the scientists, I say, why is it scientific to be an atheist?   Doesn't science teach to only believe in making conclusions from the observation of evidence?   Atheists look around the world, and say there is not evidence of God, but are they so sure they know what the evidence of God would look like?  Science has observed evidence that evolution is a process with living creatures, but how can this disprove the existence of intelligence in creation?  Who are scientists to determine what a greater intelligence would do with it's creation?  How does disproving ancient writings, disprove the existence of God?  If there was a hidden room behind a wall, does it not still exist when we have no evidence of it?  Does science really teach people to deny what is not proven, or disproven?  There may be some anthesis that think they have proven God doesn't exist, but I have never been remotely convinced by their logic, and I don't see how a true scientist would either.  

    Evolution is wonderful as a theory, I personally love it, and believe it.  However, the theory is missing a big portion of the origin explanation.  That is, how does it explain the human soul?  So, at this point, I can easily guess there is a lot of atheist's rolling their eyes right now.  If it's religious then it must be rubbish right?  Religion, that thing that is always suppose to be wrong, has come up with a concept call a soul, and it's the soul that is really what is alive according to common religious belief.  This explains death to them.  Well, I ask you this, what is the difference between a electronic computer, and a biological brain?   One has circuits, the other cells, and other differences, but do they not both store information, do they not both process input, and deliver output based on internal abilities?  Is a computer alive?  A computer can be very capable of processing information, even innovative, like living things, and making them better is just a matter of finding the right math to do it.  I feel like so many people have thought that life is created from intelligence, but how could that work?  So many living things live without brains, like plants and fungus.  I've heard atheists say the human body is like a computer that is turned off at death?  To me, consciousness is something that science hasn't yet come close to explaining.  We can't be just computer glitches gone right traveling through the universe on our two feet.  We are alive.  It's like the hidden room behind a wall, if we are not thinking of the possibility of it's existence, then it is truly hidden from us.   The question is, what really makes something alive?  If a bunch of atoms can come together and make a computer, and a bunch of atoms together can also make a living creature.  What makes the living creature alive, and the computer a non-living machine?  Are all thinks alive?  And intelligence makes them aware that they are alive?  My point, is that this is not answered?  Why do you need a living thing, to make a living thing?  Are we one consciousness that has been divided up trillions of ways into every living thing on earth?  I can't think of anything that could really explain life, and I feel like the hardest questions never get asked, when it comes to humans.  It's far from being answered, yet evolution is still sometimes explained as a strong theory, that solidly explains life, yet it clearly to me is still at it's beginning stages of explaining the origin of life.  

    Religion should love evolution.  Think about this, according to current theory, life on Earth started four billon years ago, but at that time life existed as singled celled life forms.  These cells were not like the cells that make up you and me, they were prokaryote cells, they had no nucleus.   Prokaryote cells are always singled celled life, so you can't make a multi-cellular life form from them.  Two billon years goes by with prokaryote cells being the only life on earth.  After two billion years, a mutation is finally ready, and eukaryote cells now appear.  Another half a billion years the eukaryote cells start to change into different kinds of cells.  About a hundred million years after this, these different eukaryote cells start grouping together to make multicellular life.  Different eukaryote cells make different living things, some become plants, some become fungus, and some very tiny creatures that move around.  There are so many points of interest to discuss in the evolutionary time line, and I just realized I can't write about them all.  

    Skipping to the point, one thing is very obvious to me, the necessary mutations to go from a prokaryote cells to a human being, keep getting closer together in the time line.  To finally see something resembling a fish is 500 million years ago, to have something like a mammal 100 million years ago, for something resembling a human, it takes 8 million years go.  But with all that accomplished, it is only 200,000 - 300,000 years ago that homosapiens appear.    

    The point to understand, is how far apart these events are separated in the timeline.  The evolutionary leaps are happening more frequently as the timeline progresses.  It seems to me, the more evolution establishes, the faster it gets and making a whole new stage of evolution.  

    So think about this.  If in four billion years, some prokaryote cells can become a human being.  What can human beings become in four billion years of evolution?  Whatever humans may become in four billion years, what could come from that living thing having another four billion years of evolution?  What limit would their be for life.  To have the power to create technology that can extend our body's ability.  All technology does this, tools extend the ability of our hands, vehicles extend the ability of our legs, cooking extends the ability of our digestive system.  Cameras around the earth extend our ability to see.  Medicine extends our ability to heal.  At what point does all this external technology possibly come back to directly update the abilities of our bodies, rather then augment them?

    Yes, this all probably sounds like science fiction, but to me, evolution is the best theory from science that shows that God is possible.  Is it possible that through evolution, something immortal and capable to creating this universe can exist?  Would that God create worlds in the same way others were created?  We don't know.  Yet with that thought, can we at least understand, that there are big things that we don't yet understand?  

    So to me evolution is the greatest thing given to religion.  Yet, religion rejects it.  This is an example, of how people should embrace truth.  That doesn't mean embrace everything people teach each other, because falsehood is possible, but if something is true, and it's embraced, it will become a boost for us.  We won't always know how, but it will help us somehow in the end.  Religion may need to have faith in truth, when it points to the unknown, and science may need to not rule out possibilities that it has not observed yet, or thought of yet.

    Perhaps our big problem in this debate is that we all think they know more then we really know.  

    

    

      

Money

     Money, is often misunderstood.  I'm surprised at this, because it's such an important concept in our lives.  So much of what happens in our lives is influenced by the use of money.  Yet, with this big subject, we setup expectations and conclusions about money that are truly odd.  Following my common style, I looked at common definitions of money, and will summarize what I have found.  

Common descriptions summarized:

• A medium of exchange.
• Assets or property that is owned by a person.  
• A particular object that is accepted as exchange of goods or services. 
• Money is wealth.

    These common definitions don't make very much sense to me, and they have not for a while.  Money can be a medium of exchange, but so can anything else.  Money is not wealth.  Money does not create wealth.  Money does not control wealth.  

    I hope I have created enough confusion, and if this doesn't all make sense, I will start a long explanation, because those are out of style it seems.  Money is rarely described in a way that makes sense.  What money really is, money is a measuring tool.  

    We have lots of systems of measurement, like kilograms and old English pounds are measurement types for weight.  Systems of measurement are very important in a modern world.  Money is just another measurement system like any other, only it's used to measure value during trade.  We trade products, we trade peoples voluntary time, we trade opportunities, we trade ideas.  

    So long as money is worth something to people, then it can be used in the process of getting wealth, but money it's self is not wealth.   My feeling is that this is the biggest misconception about money there is.  A database is just numbers, paper is just paper, gold is just gold.  When these things become money, that are given a power over society.  

    How happy would you be to have suddenly a million dollars of cash appear next to you?  Very happy.  Now image you are now transported to a tropical island all alone with no chance of rescue with your million dollars.  On this empty island there are no restaurants, no stores, no hotels and no people to staff them, what value does your money have?   This is my point.  Money is not wealth.  Money can potentially bring us wealth, when it works, but wealth it is not.  With money alone, you don't have a million dollars, just have a pile of heavy paper.

    This is why my definition makes so much more sense to me, and why the language we use around money doesn't make sense.  Does one "make" money?  Or does one "earn" money, or "acquire" money?  The only people that "make" money are the ones that manufacture it.  The rest of us are earning, gaining, or acquiring it.  Common language describing money leads us to indulge in fantasy about money, that it has some super ability to make everything better for us.  Money, has no power of it's self.  Power from money, is in the influence money has over people.  Money is useful, but only because it helps people organize their trade more effectively.  Money is powerful because people will often choose to honor it's value.  People have faith in money, and it's ability to provide an score or amount to something that can't be easily valued yet needs to be.  

    I have so often heard, how, "money makes money?"  Money does not make money.  What people are referring to is investments, and people can earn money from investments.  And how did they earn money from investments?  The same way all money is earned, by trading something.  What investors are trading is risk.  The investor risks money, and if the money is not lost by the investment, the investor is paid for assuming the risk.  Even if the investor creates a contract in which they would cease property if the money loaned wasn't repaid, they still have to risk the process of claiming the property, and hopefully getting the value or money they need from it.  

    I don't say all this to point out good guys or bad guys.  Trade is potentially a very good thing, when good judgement is used.  And the way human bias works, pointing out who are bad and who is good is much more complicated then people think.  There is a class struggle that has always been going on in human society.  The rich say the poor are not important like them, and the poor say the rich earn nothing unlike them.  The funny thing about rich people and poor people, is that they both think the other owes them something.  This post is about what money is, not about the squabbles we make over this age old debate over who has wealth and who doesn't.  

    Inflation is a fun concept in economics, and it's another example that money is only a system of measurement.  If you create more money, you have not created more wealth, instead with more money, the currency now only represents less of the economy.  

    What of the age old argument, I have heard so often; "money is evil."  Money does sometimes gets blamed for suffering in this world, but how can a tool of measurement be evil?  If people didn't have money, they would still want what other people have, and would scheme to get it.  They still would ignore the needs of people who are struggling while they were pursuing their own interests.  People would still judge others by their wealth, and yes without money there would still be wealth.  Money is no more evil than a kilometer can be evil.  Human behavior creates evil.  Saying money is evil is really how a child may understand something dangerous.  Somehow childish belief systems creep into adulthood, this is nothing to be ashamed of, it just happens.  Children need to sometimes understand things in a simple way, like calling something evil that has no intelligence, capable of choosing to be evil.  As our minds mature, we need to understand evil for what it is, something that only humans are capable of.  An animal can be dangerous, but it's following it's instinct, evil requires an amount of self awareness.  So humans can be evil, objects are just objects, not evil, and animals are just doing what they are capable of doing and are not evil.  It's so easy to fall into anthropomorphic way of thinking, and apply this to money.  Doing so we loose perspective, to fix the problems we think are created by money, we have to fix these problems with-in ourselves.   

    Long long ago, some very smart people figured out that rather then trading things, they could trade money.  Money is easy to carry, and easy to accumulate.  Money has a problem, our brain wants to think of money in an abstract way, and assign it meaning that it just doesn't have.  Money is important, money is useful, money is needed.  I'm not anti-money, money is great.  However, it's a great tool, nothing more.  

    My last illusion about money that I will attempt to discredit is "money solves problems."  Money helps trade, but the number of problems it solves ends there.  You can't solve a problem with money, and you still can't solve a problem with more money.  Problems are solved by people.  Yes, any problem a human being encountered that was solved, was not solved by money, it was solved by one or more persons.  Money can be used as one of the tools to solve a problem, but it will almost always not be the only tool, and tools will not solve a problem, people solve problems.  People have experience, people make plans, people use computers and write algorithms, people use tools and make tools.  Why do we indicate objects create success, people create success.  They may require tools to accomplish the success, and tools are important, and sometimes essential, but living intelligence solves problems, and only people have intelligence, not tools.  Automation of any kind is just another tool a person created.    So if there is a big problem that needs to be solved, what are the odds more money will solve it?  It depends on the problem, but likely money alone will not be enough, or may not be needed at all.  Because if something isn't being fixed, then what is really needed, is the thoughts, planning and experience of a person or persons.  Someone may say, "the project was failing, so we hired more workers, and we are back on schedule."  Well, to that, money payed for the works yes, but who hired them?  Who decided we needed more workers?  What research did they do to conclude that more workers were needed?  While money is important and perhaps an irreplaceable tool, it does not create success.  Even if you hire people, you still need them to make good choices, and learn or have learned the right skills for the job.      

    In conclusion, don't think that I'm indicating money doesn't mean anything, and can be spent without good judgement.  That would be foolish, always use good judgement in everything.  Personally, I love saving money.  I'm not a big spender, and it gives me joy to find ways of saving money, and a feeling of peace, when I can turn down a big expense.  It gives me a good feeling, knowing extra money is there, and has not been spent.  I feel safer, and safety to me is more important that luxury.   This is not the only good philosophy of money.  I can't describe the good ways and bad ways of using money in this post, and I don't feel I know them well enough yet to write about them.  Whatever your personal beliefs about money are, make it work for you.  Do you have to spend money?  No, it's a tool, if you don't need a tool, then put it on a shelf, and keep it save for when it's needed.  If you loose your money, because of some major bill that was out of your control.  Then don't worry, it was just a tool, and sometimes tools have to be used up to fix things.  One of the best ways to use this wonderful tool, is in helping others.  You have to be balanced in your choices, but each of us will at times get opportunities to use this tool to help others.   Perhaps the greatest lesson of money, is learning how we may use this tool, to bring something good into the world.  

    I like what money is, but I don't want in my own mind to become a servant of it, I want money to serve me.  

Why illegal drugs are bad.

     I feel like my posts have not been simple enough.  Long speeches are not popular today compared to the past.  So I'm going to briefly explain why I believe that drugs are bad for us.  By drugs I mean illegal drugs, and the misuse of legal drugs.  We are living beings, but more then that we are living beings with a brain.  Which means, our brain has to follow a algorithm in order to make decisions.  Now what that algorithm is like is a big mystery, however it's possible to get close to describing what it's doing.  To put it in my own words according to my own believe, that algorithm is using pleasure and pain to control behavior.  

    Yes, our mind is smart and can do things that can surprise us, but it's also very predictable.  Our mind wants pleasure, and it doesn't want pain, but the problem is that all pleasure requires pain first before pleasure can be obtained.  Now here is the complicated part, because some choices with pain in them will lead to pleasure, and other choices that also have pain will not lead to pleasure.  

    I can't seem to explain it with less words.  Our mind is trying to figure out which pain is profitable, and which is not.  For a farmer two-hundred years ago, this process works well, if the farmer plants their crops on time, the harvest is better, and eating creates pleasure.  The subconscious mind understands that planting at the right time is important to get pleasure again.  A rat will push a lever to get food in an experiment, so to do we push metaphorical levers all the time, in order to get a treat.  

    So why are drugs bad, because inside our brain is a list of all the pain that brings pleasure.  When we take a drug that gives us pleasure, the drug is added to the list, and it's set to a very high priority over other things.  Things like how you should work hard at your job, or get a better job, or get a job in the first place.  How you should study hard for the small business idea you have.  How you should take care of yourself so that others will be socially impressed by you, so you can form the social connections you need for your professional life.   

    More importantly what about family, family is on our list of things that bring pleasure, but if drugs is added to the list, it may and often does push family down the list, and drugs becomes more important.  

    Our fiction in entertainment is full of mythological creatures like zombies, and science fiction mind control of all sorts.  We are so intent on learning about these things, yet do we not see the mind control that is all over our society?  Mind, and mood controlling drugs hack our minds and change what is good and bad in a way we can little control.  How many drug addicts overcome their addition?  If they do overcome it, how well is their recovery?  No matter what they may have learned from their experience, think about how their lives could have been different without the mind control of those substances.  

    So many missed opportunities because of these substances.  When I watch entertainment, and I do watch a lot of it, I see so many different believes with drug use.  So entertainers want to make it into a joke, others want to show the tragedy of it, but only some.  It's clear many people are teaching a false believe that drugs are funny, and will bring happiness into your live.   All us anti-drug people need to stop trying to ruin the party.  Yes we can ruin a party but drug users and dealers will ruin peoples lives.  

    This is another thing that upsets me too, people need their own mind.  There own mind to find pleasure.  Live is full of pleasures, and we should seek after ones that are sustainable.  Because these pleasures will lead us to survival and prosperity, and the good things in live that money can't buy.  We need our own mind when we create relationships with others, both to protect us, and to help us accomplish it.  We need our own mind when we choose to work to create something, or improve something instead of stealing from what others have created.  

    Is pleasure good or bad?  I believe is a question of if the pleasure is natural not artificial.  Drugs are artificial pleasures.  We should avoid them at all cost.  They only justification could be medical use under a trained professional.  Not medical use for our selves.  Because if we take drugs, we metaphorically become like a zombie, with limited or no control over ourselves.  We cannot medicate ourselves with mind altering drugs, it obvious this is true when you finally see what they do to people.  

    People will become smarter, and wiser if they can give their natural mind a chance to work out how this world is supposed to be.