#thoughts
23 posts tagged thoughts. All tags
Donnie Darko - An Interpretation
My chapter-by-chapter reading of Donnie Darko through The Philosophy of Time Travel, arguing it is straight science fiction about tangent universes, not the emo psychological thriller everyone treats it as. Spoilers throughout.
Too Smart for your Own Good
Smart enough to coast, not driven enough to do anything with it. An honest look at the gifted-program kid who used his gifts mostly to be lazy, and is still paying for the pride that came with them.
Features! But its got a compass!
Why does the iPhone need a compass, and why did Ralphie need one in his BB gun? A cynical look at feature creep and how useless add-ons are usually the exact thing that makes us buy something.
Friendship
My definition of a friend, why I have cut so many people loose over the years without much regret, and why some of my best friends are people I first met online. Being told I am difficult to be friends with is fair.
The Butterfly Effect
How one offhand choice can quietly set the rest of your life in motion. A friend likes to credit himself for everything in mine because he got me playing WoW, and annoyingly, he is not wrong.
Fulfillment is?
A reader asked what fulfillment actually means, so I tried to work it out while feeling pretty unfulfilled myself. The honest answer is I am probably just a glass-half-empty person who would complain no matter what.
The American Dream
Why am I so unhappy just being content? A jaded, somewhat bleak picking-apart of the American Dream, and why a comfortable life I know is good still feels like one I would rather quit.
Life Sucks, Then You Die
A gloomy walk through the whole arrangement: school, work, retirement, death, and how we sell our labor back to the companies whose stuff we are working to afford. I do not have a fix, just the bleak math of it.
Reward Systems and Instant Gratification
Top WoW guilds run like a perfect communism, people working harder for virtual nothing than they ever would at their real jobs. The difference is instant gratification, and I wonder what life would look like if it worked that way.
Is human happiness the driving force behind scientific innovation?
The case that nearly every technology we love was first built to make our lives easier or to wage war, often both. From the spear and ENIAC to DuPont, and the worry that all this convenience has just made us lazy.
I'll handle this, I'm a professional.
Calling yourself a professional just means you got paid, not that you are any good. The gap between making money at something and actually being an expert, and why professionalism is an attitude most professionals never show.
Professional Gaming
Pro gaming is a real way to make money now, but the games change fast and there's no contract or retirement plan. On the kids dropping out of school to chase it, and the parents who let them.
You're so unique, you're the same.
Khakis, an IT job, a townhouse, Old Navy. I am about as normal as they come on the outside, which is exactly why uniqueness is a state of mind, not eye shadow and all-black outfits.
Only people who have blogs, read blogs
A hunch I can't shake: the only people who actually read blogs are the people who write them. I used to think blogs were stupid, then started one and immediately subscribed to thirty others.
Living in digital worlds
After years of MMOs and finally quitting them, the thing I notice most is how players rationalize the time, the friendships, and their loyalty to one game. Quit, and you get written off like an ex-addict by your old guild.
I shall name my first born son "Violence"
On the parade of absurd celebrity baby names and the ones New Zealand actually banned, like Sex Fruit and Talula Does the Hula. I think the names are ridiculous, but I am not convinced the courts should get a say.
Science is Racist
A Dallas commissioner took offense at the phrase black hole and called it racist. I walk through his examples one by one, where the etymology actually came from, and where I think he was just stretching.
Is there a God?
The obligatory philosophy-blog post on whether God exists. I work through a few definitions, land on no for all of them, and admit that as a man of science the big bang sounds better to me than a creator.
Presentism and Imagination, Depression
Your brain fills in the unknown past and future using how you feel right now, which is why a bad mood makes everything look bleak. Whether knowing about this trick is any use against depression is the part I'm not sure about.
Truth with respect to art
A web designer wrote that the future of design rests on Christian truth. I take apart the same question from the other side: truth and art are both subjective, and art owes truth nothing.
Maslow's Needs and Gaming
Why games, and MMORPGs especially, are so easy to sink into: mapped against Maslow's hierarchy, they quietly satisfy nearly every need a real life would. I've been addicted myself, so this isn't me judging from above.
Anti-Social Society
I am, by my own admission, a selfish anti-social asshole who turns down every invitation and then enjoys himself whenever forced to go. An attempt to figure out why, with a detour through brussels sprouts and psychological egoism.
The Sentence
A book on happiness got me thinking about the one trait that sets us apart: we think about the future. It is also, conveniently, the source of my own depression.