Where did your ancestors go?
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Where did your yesterday self go?
— Me@2012.03.01
2012.03.06 Tuesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Author Archives: rpflee
The Most Evil Creature of them All
[Scene: A scientist is in a Frankensteinesque laboratory mixing chemicals in a beaker.]
Scientist: I have combined the DNA of the world’s most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all.
[A pod reminiscent of the ones from the movie “The Fly” opens with a cloud of steam. It clears, revealing a naked human male.]
Naked Man: It turns out it’s man.
— The Scary Door
— Futurama
2012.03.05 Monday ACHK
Bureaucracy
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Bureaucracy makes diligent people lazy and intelligent people behave as though they were stupid.
– John T. Reed
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2010.08.21 Saturday ACHK
種子論起點 14.2
這段改編自 2010 年 3 月 20 日的對話。
為「種子論」命名的困難之處，在於它的案例太多，多到一個程度：不例子之間，有時會貌似各不相干。例如，你很難想像，「談情」和「寫作」有什麼關係。又例如，你很難發現，「Google」和「栽花」，有什麼共通之處。
— Me@2012.03.05
2012.03.05 Monday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Free will theorem, 2
Block time, 3
There are logically flawed conclusions in the show made out of various careless arguments, too. For example, it’s being said that one must adopt “eternalism” – all of the spacetime, whether it is in the past or in the future – is equally real. But such a conclusion is once again sloppy. Nothing like that follows from relativity. And in fact, relativity combined with quantum mechanics implies things like the “free will theorem” which pretty much refutes eternalism.
— The Fabric of the Cosmos II
— Lubos Motl
If we consider the universal wave function, there is no collapse, then the block time is allowed.
— Me@2011.11.19
2012.03.04 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
魚目混珠
「明顯無毒」或者「明顯有毒」的水，對你無害，因為如果無毒，飲下也無妨；如果「明顯有毒」，你一定不會飲。真正有害的，是介乎二者之間，表面無毒，而實質有毒的東西。
同理，「完全好人」或者「完全壞人」，對你無害。真正有害的，是介乎二者之間，似是而非的物體。
例如，一個壞人如果壞之餘，同時有很多優點，你就有可能不可以，和他立刻斷絕來往，而要暫時繼續，忍耐他的缺點，承受他的攻擊。
又例如，一個善良的人，如果過份愚昧，就會做了很多壞事，自己也不知道。而他身邊的人，亦可能因為見他善良，而對他毫無防範，最終身受其害。
— Me@2012-03-03 9:56:17 AM
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2012.03.04 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Brain
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.
— Emerson M. Pugh
— As quoted in The Biological Origin of Human Values
2012.03.03 Saturday ACHK
Rejection 4
You are rejected by all but one. You reject all but one.
— based on John T. Reed
— Me@2010.01.04
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2010.01.04 Monday (c) ACHK
種子論起點 14
這段改編自 2010 年 3 月 20 日的對話。
長遠來說，在不影響準確度的前提下，我們應該為「種子論」改一個震撼一點的名字。即使是一個十分利害的道理工具，如果沒有一個驚奇的名字，人們就不會留意，不會理會。
— Me@2012.03.03
2012.03.03 Saturday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Anthropic principle, 2.3
In fact, lots of astrophysicists think the anthropic issue, rather than signaling a problem with modern science, points toward a deeper understanding of the universe. Rees likes to use our solar system as an analogy. Says Rees: “If Earth were the only planet in the universe, you’d be astonished that we just happened to be exactly the right distance from the sun to be habitable.” That would be absurdly improbable, but it becomes much less so when you realize that the Milky Way almost certainly has millions of planets. With so many possibilities, it’s not surprising that at least one planet is friendly to life.
And so, he contends, it might be with the cosmos. What we think of as the “universe,” argues Rees, could well be just one of trillions of universes on an indescribably vaster stage called the multiverse. Each of those universes would have different laws and characteristics. Most of them are totally unlivable; like Earth, ours just happens to be one of the lucky ones.
— Cosmic Conundrum
— By Michael D. Lemonick; J. Madeleine Nash
— Time (magazine)
The correct version of anthropic principle should be called the anti-anthropic principle.
— Me@2011.11.10
2012.03.02 Friday ACHK
Teller 2
7. If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely. This is one of the darkest of all psychological secrets.
When I cut the cards, I let you glimpse a few different faces. You conclude the deck contains 52 different cards (No. 1—Pattern recognition). You think you’ve made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties (No. 7 — Choice is not freedom).
— Teller Reveals His Secrets
— By Teller
— Smithsonian magazine, March 2012
2012.03.02 Friday ACHK
Anthropic principle, 2.2
You may say – and some people actually say – that the anthropic reasoning is not similar to religion, but instead, it is analogous to Darwin’s theory because the Universe “compete” much like the animals, and there is no explicit God there. Well, it is as analogous as much as the evolutionary theory itself is analogous to creationism, but not more. Darwin’s theory has pretty well-defined rules and mechanisms. The animals are doing all these familiar things and they live together – and compete – according to some schemes that are deeply rooted in biology, chemistry, and physics – and that we can predict.
On the other hand, the arena of very many Universes that “compete” has no testable rules like that, and therefore it mimicks religion. (Of course, if someone could derive really exact rules that govern the Universes in the multiverse, the situation would change.)
— The anthropic lack of principles
— Lubos Motl
2012.03.02 Friday ACHK
Rejection 3
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
— Ray Bradbury
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不要強勢, 不要弱勢, 要平等.
— Me@2009.10.06
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2009.10.12 Monday (c) ACHK
地獄篇（前傳）
失敗是正常，成功是例外。
人生，是一個尋找例外的過程。
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地獄是正常，天堂是例外。
人生，是一個創造例外的經歷。
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唯有經過地獄的磨難，才有創造天堂的力量。 — 尼采
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— Me@2012.03.01
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2012.03.01 Thursday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Anthropic principle, 2.1
The vacuum structure of the theory, called the string theory landscape (or the anthropic portion of string theory vacua), is not well understood. String theory contains an infinite number of distinct meta-stable vacua, and perhaps 10^520 of these or more correspond to a universe roughly similar to ours — with four dimensions, a high planck scale, gauge groups, and chiral fermions. Each of these corresponds to a different possible universe, with a different collection of particles and forces.
Some physicists believe this is a good thing, because it may allow a natural anthropic explanation of the observed values of physical constants, in particular the small value of the cosmological constant. The argument is that most universes contain values for physical constants that do not lead to habitable universes (at least for humans), and so we happen to live in the most “friendly” universe. This principle is already employed to explain the existence of life on earth as the result of a life-friendly orbit around the medium-sized sun among an infinite number of possible orbits (as well as a relatively stable location in the galaxy).
— Wikipedia on String theory
The correct version of anthropic principle should be called anti-anthropic principle.
— Me@2011.11.10
2012.03.01 Thursday ACHK
Partnership
We did not start as friends, but as people who respected and admired each other. Crucial, absolutely crucial for a partnership. As soon as we could afford it, we ceased sharing lodgings. Equally crucial.
— Teller (entertainer)
— 14 years ago: the day Teller gave me the secret to my career in magic
— Brian Brushwood
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2012.02.29 Wednesday ACHK
Meta-company
Meta 2
“You know what’s great about the YC network? It gives the benefit of being part of a large company without being part of a big company,” Graham says. “The problem with doing a startup–even though it’s better in almost every other respect–is that you don’t have the resources of a big company to draw on. It’s very lonely; you have no one to give you advice or help you out. In a big company, you might be horribly constrained, but there are like 1,000 other people you can go to to deal with any number of problems. Now [with YC] you have 1,000 people you can go to to deal with problems, and you don’t have all the restrictions of a big company.”
— Paul Graham: Why Y Combinator Replaces The Traditional Corporation
— Austin Carr
2012.02.29 Wednesday ACHK
Result-oriented
Another thing to consider is your definition of results. It’s possible that you could do every right … but still your business fail, …
There are some things that simply not in your control, and there are times when you have to define “results” in a different way than you might have thought:
Yes, my business is going through a rough time. But what am I discovering? What strengths am I gaining? What increased capacity will I have to apply to future efforts?
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Even when the observable results appear to be negative, you can still make huge progress …
— The Speed of Trust, p.116
— Stephen M. R. Covey, Rebecca R. Merrill
2012.02.28 Tuesday ACHK
Enjoy everything, need nothing, 2.2
種子論起點 12.3 | 兩次測驗 2
有心栽花花不香，無心插柳柳成蔭。當你「需要」一樣東西時，你就會失去它。
又例如，當你「需要」得到好成績時，你就會失去它：你的成績即使不太差，亦一定不會是最好。
如果你「需要」有好成績，才會感到有自信的話，每次在學業上遇到挫折時，你都會覺得那是對 自身人格 和 自我價值 的一個否定。那樣，溫習時，你會戰戰兢兢，自然不能得心應手；考試時，你會惶惶不安，自然不可揮灑自如。沒有豁達的心靈，就沒有靈活的頭腦。你一定不會是一個一流的學生。
正確的心態是，謀事在人，成事在天。你要知道，沒有人可以控制到，究竟自己拿不拿到好成績，因為影響成績的因素，實在有不少。你唯一可以做，唯一可以「控制」的，就是運用最好的策略，把試前十分有限的溫習時間，發揮至最大的功效，盡量提高「拿到好成績」的機會率。
在考試臨場作答時，你要使用同樣的心理結構。你可以控制的，是盡力作答，拿得一分得一分，從而提高「成功」的機會率。至於最終成不成功，或者最終拿到多少分，則完全不在你的控制範圍以內。
把手緊握 什麼都沒有 把手放開 你得到一切 — 臥虎藏龍
— Me@2012.02.28
2012.02.28 Tuesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Logical arrow of time, 2
However, the right definition of the past and the future is independent of these sign conventions for spacetime coordinates. The right definition says that
The future is evolving from the past (and the present).
Correspondingly, the calculations that are designed to theoretically mimic this evolution have the same arrow:
The future is calculated from the past (and the present) as long as we use the usual calculations that resemble the evolution.
It’s important that you can’t exchange the words “future” and “past” in the sentence above.
That doesn’t mean that science can never say anything about the past, by manipulating with the present data or the data from a closer past. But this type of calculation is different from predictions of the future. It follows different formulae, too. They’re the formulae of logical inference, e.g. Bayesian inference.
And as we have explained many times, the results of this inference – the retrodictions – always depend on our priors. So the knowledge of the present is enough to calculate the future (classically) or to predict the unique probabilities of various states in the future (quantum mechanically). But it is simply never enough to calculate the unique state or unique probabilities of various states in the past.
— Logical arrow of time and terminology
— Lubos Motl
2012.02.28 Tuesday ACHK
Physics Town 
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