I wrote something to post in my Philo forums that I thought was quite interesting. I added in a 'context' mini section so that people who do not take my philo module will understand it. It's a rather long write-up, so.. be prepared :p
Context:
There is an article about 'hedonism', which is the concept that humans are only interested in pursuing pleasure and avoiding suffering. (this is a very loose definition, there are more sub-categories of this and further elaboration/clarification that I won't go into, you just need to know this definition to understand what I'm going to say)
So the author(Roger Crisp) presents an analogy of an Experience Machine to counter hedonism. Let's suppose there is this new scientific device, called the Experience Machine. What it can do is when you are plugged into it, it allows you to experience all the pleasures that you would experience in the real world, with no suffering at all. In fact, it lets you experience this forever and ever. And you won't know that you are actually plugged in, you will think it is all real.
Will you want to plug in?
Most people would say 'no', and Crisp suggests some reasons for this, that it is because you want to have the feeling of accomplishment of doing something for real.. and some other reasons I don't quite get.
I didn't get why people would say no though. And as such, my dissertion begins:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So we all know the Experience machine analogy - and the question is
"Do you want to plug into the experience machine?"
A) Yes, I want to plug in
B) No, I do not want to plug in, I want to stay in my present life.
and most of us would choose B, and NOT to be plugged into such a machine. And why? The reason the article gave was that we desired the accomplishment, yada yada. Whatever your reason is, just keep it in your head at the moment. If you would choose A, you don't have to read on, you are on my side already.
So now, what if I presented a reverse situation - instead of asking whether you want to plug into the experience machine, i tell you that you ARE already in the experience machine. The question now is,
"Do you want to unplug from the experience machine?"
C) Yes, I want to unplug
D) No, I want to stay in my present life and stay plugged in.
If you had chosen C, and your first answer was A, the contradiction is obvious. You need to rethink one of your responses, something is wrong, you can't both want to plug in and plug out of the machine it doesn't make sense.
And if you had chosen B, then D, the contradiction is there though not so straightforward. While your choice of being in the machine (whether you are plugging in or plugging out) changes, the underlying theme for both responses is that you want to stay in your present life. If you are in this camp, hold that thought, my response to you is below.
And what if you chose B, then C? The contradiction is more subtle, but still there. If i rephrase the options and put them side by side it should become obvious:
1) You do not want to plug into a machine because you prefer your current life
2) You want to unplug from your current life
1 and 2 are the opposite of each other. If you had chosen to not be plugged in because current factors influence you to prefer your current state of the world, then it wouldn't make sense that when you find out that you are in fact plugged in, you suddenly detest it and want out of it. The prior factors that made you choose this world should also make you choose NOT to unplug from it.
So what is the real issue here? It seems to me that it is a problem of REALITY. As we are brought up, we are taught Science, to believe in what we can observe. Thus, REALITY becomes a forefront concept to us. We seek to have REALITY. It's not just about having pleasure anymore, it's about our perception that we are having pleasure for real.
For those who took option B and D:
You chose not to plug into the machine because you thought what you had was reality.
You then chose not to unplug because the world that you were in is your perceived reality.
Now it needs to be clarified that it is our PERCEIVED REALITY that we want, not the 'actual' reality (as in the case of when asked to unplug and you decide to unplug)
After all, it does not make any logical sense that if your perception of your current reality is so real that you choose option B to stay in your current state BUT then choose option C later on, to choose to go to the 'actual' reality, because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS LIKE. If your decision-making process had chosen B in the first place, the same decision-making process SHOULD rightly choose option D. The reason of 'I want to unplug because I want to experience reality' is invalid because staying plugged in has been, and is your reality, and thus, should be your preferred option.
It is therefore logically flawed to pick B and then C.
So what exactly is reality? Reality is merely a perception. An optical illusion is a reality (though misconceived one). A magic trick is reality to the audience, but not to the magician. A dream is sometimes, in a sense, reality, when we don't realise we are dreaming. Which is this case of the experience machine.
So how does this tie back to the hedonism argument? If we remember what the Experience Machine argument was arguing for, I believe it was to say that pleasure is NOT everything we want, since most of us would rather not be plugged in (Option B) and hence we don't really just want pleasure.
However, i propose that the reason for not wanting to plug in is because we desire REALITY. It is not about experiencing pleasure, it is about perceiving that the pleasure we are experiencing is real. That is what we all want.
Thus, the whole point of this is to show you that A is not that bad a choice after all, assuming you perceive the Experience machine world as your only and 'real' reality. And that choosing option B does not mean you are against hedonism, you still want pleasure, just that you want to perceive that it is real.
OK I'm done. I hope all this makes sense, I did not have a conclusion in mind when I started writing this, I just wanted to get the contradiction about choosing B then C out there (as that was the concensus in my tutorial) and see what people have to say about it. Of course, if you have things to comment about on the rest of my argument, please do so.
Friday, 1 October 2010
promoted!
Yay! Finally!
Diamond league!! In Starcraft 2 diamond league is the top league in the game.. and i finally hit it -_-
A few reasons, such as starting in silver and climbing my way up (i started playing when i bought the game, i didn't practise in custom game AT ALL. yes, so my newbie losses made me silver) which is WAAAY harder than like say, landing in gold/plat after your placement matches
Also, I wasn't playign that much because of midterms, so I was stuck at Platinum for quite awhile.
Then today.. I played one game.. won.. AND PROMOTED. YESAASAASD
Ok time to climb the diamond ladder soon.
Diamond league!! In Starcraft 2 diamond league is the top league in the game.. and i finally hit it -_-
A few reasons, such as starting in silver and climbing my way up (i started playing when i bought the game, i didn't practise in custom game AT ALL. yes, so my newbie losses made me silver) which is WAAAY harder than like say, landing in gold/plat after your placement matches
Also, I wasn't playign that much because of midterms, so I was stuck at Platinum for quite awhile.
Then today.. I played one game.. won.. AND PROMOTED. YESAASAASD
Ok time to climb the diamond ladder soon.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
The TIme Snowball Effect
Most of us are familiar with the 'Butterfly Effect', which is in essence a snowball effect of a seemingly insignificant and small event leading to a much greater and monumental effect. What I have been thinking about is a kind of butterfly effect, which I shall term 'Time Snowball effect' (can't think of a fitting enough term.. still thinking of it!)
Let's go through a simple thought experiment to demonstrate what I mean.
1) You wake up in the morning, you push off your bedsheets, and head to the bathroom.
2) You wash your face and then reach for your toothbrush. It drops to the floor and you let out a swearword as you bend to pick it up.
3) After washing up, you get dressed, and leave the house.
4) You wait at the lift lobby for your lift, and eventually it comes and bring you down.
5) You walk to the bus stop and take your usual bus to school.
6) At a traffic junction, your bus stops as you stare out of the window.
7) You reach school and you head to class. However, you bump into a guy and he makes you drop all your notes
8) After gathering your things, you check your watch - and you straighten up in alarm. You are late! You start running to class.
Now, if I were to pose this question:
Q: Why were you late for class?
Did you realise that a possible answer for this is that - because you dropped your toothbrush in the morning?
The chain of events is as such -
1) You drop your toothbrush, and you have to pick it up and wash it again. This costs about 10 seconds
2) This made you miss the lift, which costs you a minute of waiting for it.
3) This made you miss the earlier bus (which came 1 minute 10 seconds before you reached the bus stop), thus you have to wait another 10 minutes.
4) This particular bus had to stop at the traffic junction, which cost another minute
5) This total delay of 12 minutes 10 seconds made you cross paths with that inconsiderate guy who knocked your things to the floor
The small, insignificant delay of dropping your toothbrush made you waste 12 minutes, 10 seconds.
Let's take another example in which instead of an event (dropping your toothbrush) that initiated the chain, it was indecisiveness. Let's say, you couldn't make up your mind what clothes to wear that morning. So you take xx minutes, which will in turn cause another chain of its own.
Do you see that our entire lives are made up of such chain of events? And often, we procrastinate, or take a moment more to do something, and the compounding effects of this are unknown to us but they definitely are present, and will always snowball, leading to minutes, hours, even days eventually, being wasted. This is what i call the 'Time Snowball Effect'.
At this juncture, I would like to focus on another angle of this discussion - I'm sure at some points of your life, in your commuting from place to place, you have bumped into a friend, an acquaintance.
Have you considered how BIG a coincidence this really is?
Let's take a simple example of my meeting a friend on a train. I was on the way from Boon Keng to Hougang, then at Serangoon, my friend Daniel boards the crowded peak train and sees me and says hi.
Do you see that:
1) My chain of events leading to me taking that train has to match exactly the chain of events leading to daniel taking that train (and the prior circle line train) for us to coincide at the same place at that exact same time.
2) We had to board from the exact same door, which is a bigger coincidence considering point 3
3) The chain of events of ALL the other commuters have to match exactly such that
a) the flow of human traffic is not too much at that particular door, so that daniel will choose to board from that door.
b) the flow of human traffic is such that the position and timing of the people who enter with daniel will not obstruct his view of me so that he could have seen me and said hi
As such, 'bumping into a friend' is actually a very unlikely event, given you understand my chain of events reasoning. Thus, this is a very strong argument for 'fate', of the concept that there is a mapped out plan for each of our lives.
If you are to argue against this, you would be subscribing to the idea that a bunch of randomly occuring events would lead to another bunch of randomly occuring events and lead to something of such great coincidence on a constant basis. What's the odds of that?
So should you NOT procrastinate or have little mishaps to avoid this Time Snowball effect? Well, it depends on which aspect of the consequences are you looking at.
Obviously, if you are trying to avoid being tardy, you have to avoid any sort of initiation of the effect and be as quick, direct and mishap-less as possible.
However, there are certain events that actually RELY on the Time Snowball effect, such as bumping into a friend. After all, if your original chain does not coincide with your friend's chain, a Time snowball may very likely shake it such that it becomes aligned with that friend.
Of course, this means you will become misaligned with others, etc. It's all a give and take.
Ok that was just some random thoughts I was having. I didn't really piece it together very well and cogently but I can't be bothered, have to get back to my psych essay now. adios.
Let's go through a simple thought experiment to demonstrate what I mean.
1) You wake up in the morning, you push off your bedsheets, and head to the bathroom.
2) You wash your face and then reach for your toothbrush. It drops to the floor and you let out a swearword as you bend to pick it up.
3) After washing up, you get dressed, and leave the house.
4) You wait at the lift lobby for your lift, and eventually it comes and bring you down.
5) You walk to the bus stop and take your usual bus to school.
6) At a traffic junction, your bus stops as you stare out of the window.
7) You reach school and you head to class. However, you bump into a guy and he makes you drop all your notes
8) After gathering your things, you check your watch - and you straighten up in alarm. You are late! You start running to class.
Now, if I were to pose this question:
Q: Why were you late for class?
Did you realise that a possible answer for this is that - because you dropped your toothbrush in the morning?
The chain of events is as such -
1) You drop your toothbrush, and you have to pick it up and wash it again. This costs about 10 seconds
2) This made you miss the lift, which costs you a minute of waiting for it.
3) This made you miss the earlier bus (which came 1 minute 10 seconds before you reached the bus stop), thus you have to wait another 10 minutes.
4) This particular bus had to stop at the traffic junction, which cost another minute
5) This total delay of 12 minutes 10 seconds made you cross paths with that inconsiderate guy who knocked your things to the floor
The small, insignificant delay of dropping your toothbrush made you waste 12 minutes, 10 seconds.
Let's take another example in which instead of an event (dropping your toothbrush) that initiated the chain, it was indecisiveness. Let's say, you couldn't make up your mind what clothes to wear that morning. So you take xx minutes, which will in turn cause another chain of its own.
Do you see that our entire lives are made up of such chain of events? And often, we procrastinate, or take a moment more to do something, and the compounding effects of this are unknown to us but they definitely are present, and will always snowball, leading to minutes, hours, even days eventually, being wasted. This is what i call the 'Time Snowball Effect'.
At this juncture, I would like to focus on another angle of this discussion - I'm sure at some points of your life, in your commuting from place to place, you have bumped into a friend, an acquaintance.
Have you considered how BIG a coincidence this really is?
Let's take a simple example of my meeting a friend on a train. I was on the way from Boon Keng to Hougang, then at Serangoon, my friend Daniel boards the crowded peak train and sees me and says hi.
Do you see that:
1) My chain of events leading to me taking that train has to match exactly the chain of events leading to daniel taking that train (and the prior circle line train) for us to coincide at the same place at that exact same time.
2) We had to board from the exact same door, which is a bigger coincidence considering point 3
3) The chain of events of ALL the other commuters have to match exactly such that
a) the flow of human traffic is not too much at that particular door, so that daniel will choose to board from that door.
b) the flow of human traffic is such that the position and timing of the people who enter with daniel will not obstruct his view of me so that he could have seen me and said hi
As such, 'bumping into a friend' is actually a very unlikely event, given you understand my chain of events reasoning. Thus, this is a very strong argument for 'fate', of the concept that there is a mapped out plan for each of our lives.
If you are to argue against this, you would be subscribing to the idea that a bunch of randomly occuring events would lead to another bunch of randomly occuring events and lead to something of such great coincidence on a constant basis. What's the odds of that?
So should you NOT procrastinate or have little mishaps to avoid this Time Snowball effect? Well, it depends on which aspect of the consequences are you looking at.
Obviously, if you are trying to avoid being tardy, you have to avoid any sort of initiation of the effect and be as quick, direct and mishap-less as possible.
However, there are certain events that actually RELY on the Time Snowball effect, such as bumping into a friend. After all, if your original chain does not coincide with your friend's chain, a Time snowball may very likely shake it such that it becomes aligned with that friend.
Of course, this means you will become misaligned with others, etc. It's all a give and take.
Ok that was just some random thoughts I was having. I didn't really piece it together very well and cogently but I can't be bothered, have to get back to my psych essay now. adios.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)