Success and happiness

There are many sayings that go along the lines of "You need to fail a million times in order to be successful" and I always had a problem with this.

I disagree with the connection between failures and success that these sayings seem to proclaim.

In my eyes there are the correct solutions and the incorrect solution, one leads to success the other to failure; and there is no restriction as to why you can't just have a correct solution from the very start. The chances of this just happens to be low.

Philosophical mental jerking, Difficulties of discussion and Free will

Philosophical mental jerking
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I find the need to think about the big questions about life and the universe even if it amounts to nothing more than mental jerking. I don't believe in god, yet I do believe in answers and thoughts that are transcendent. I have the need to believe that there exists profound answers which could be unearthed; If only I or anyone could just think with the right angle or collection of ideas, inspirations and knowledge it could be unearthed. Life without this underlying effort would feel unbearably hollow and insignificant.

Perhaps I'm simply holding onto this belief to reject nihilism and romanticize life.

Difficulties of discussion
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I have problems understanding people. In many situations I find myself on the receiving end of an explanation and I struggle to figure out the vaguest idea of what the other person means. It must be that the quality of the explanation and my receptiveness to it are simply not above the requirement to successfully communicate ideas.

This difficulty in communication leads to irritation and repetitions in unsuccessful explanations. This is more often the case when people come into a discussion with their minds set and they've aligned themselves to argue.

Argument is not the only form of meaningful discussion people can have. Exchange of knowledge and a mutual exploration of ideas and concepts is as productive if not more so.

Despite the difficulties I absolutely believe in the importance of talking about hard to grasp ideas and concepts. None of the big questions in life are going to be simple and easily communicated across, yet they are vitally important to think and talk about. Not bothering with talking about these hard to grasp and talk about concepts is just resigning yourself to a potential life of ignorance.

Free will
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Recently I've found listening to Sam Harris podcasts very comforting while I jog. Perhaps it's the fact that I like listening to shooting sounds and voices, or that I easily lose myself in thought once engaged with intriguing with ideas, or something entirely different, but the bearability of the activity has definitely improved that last couple of times I went for a run.

The last podcast I listened to Sam briefly talked about free will and how once he fully realized it's lack of existence, he no longer thought the act of being angry at other people was sane.

At the time I just sort of accepted this statement, as I didn't disagree with any particular step, but it has stuck with me for a while and I find myself wondering about it, or at least I'm doing so right now. I want to spend some time to think of the full implications of what it means for free will to not exist and how I can change my behavior in light of this fact, to be more consistent with this understanding.

Free will doesn't exist because at the biological level physics governs the processes. At the level of thoughts, the thoughts that bubble out are uncontrollable, at least not directly and in any real way that is guaranteed to work, and people don't have control over the information available to them when making decisions.

How then is it possible to justify anger towards someone for their behavior when all of the elements that went into the decision making process was outside of their control?

On Objective Morality

Objective morality exists in the same sense that numbers exist. Now even how numbers exist is up to debate, however that doesn't stop it from being of practical use. This is the same for morality, the bits that we do have knowledge of can be utilized for good.

Objective morality is needed to fight moral relativism, which is used by many to profess that there is no point in making progress with moral philosophies, in fact the idea of progress itself cannot exist in the face of moral relativism, as all philosophies are equally but differently moral.

However this wholly separates morality/moral philosophies from their consequences, specifically how they affect well being, and in this sense morality not only is of no use, but the whole concept itself is rendered meaningless and pointless.

-What is morality? why is this morality? If there is one thing that morality is relevant to it is the well being of sentient beings. If any other types of moralities exist then they are irrelevant or incorrect in terms of what we mean when we talk about morality.

-Existence of moral objectivity If you agree that morality is relevant to the well being of sentient beings then we know that morality exists. It exists as a spectrum of possibilities in which the state of well being, of sentient beings, can exist. This is the objective morality that's out there. Just as there is a spectrum of possibilities in which the state of human knowledge can exist.

Deconstruction Of Family's MBTI Type Dynamics

This post is going to be about exactly what the title says, namely me attempting at analyzing the MBTI types of each of my family members, and going further on to speculate about how these types manifest into behaviors that are indicative of the family as a whole.

In this post I think I'll simply do a brain dump, I've been wanting to use that word, of the types, I speculate, each of my family members belong to, and might possibly back up these guesses with specific observations.

Father - ESTJ

Mother - ENFJ - Confirmed

Eldest Brother - ISTJ - Confirmed

Middle Brother - ESTP - Confirmed

Me - INTP - Confirmed

Older Cousin - ESTJ

Younger Cousin - ISTJ - Confirmed

I am not certain about all of these yet and some of them are simply place holders, which I believe are similar to their real types.

'The Hitch'- Christopher Hitchens documentary (2014)

'The Hitch'- Christopher Hitchens documentary (2014) (1 hr. 22 min) -http://vimeo.com/94776807


This is a fan made documentary, produced by Kristoffer Seland Hellesmark, about one of my favorite proponents for Atheism, according to Wikipedia a "British American author, philosopher, polemicist, debater, and journalist", the late Christopher Hitchens. I found the music used very appropriate and effective in conveying the essence of the documentary. The extra television frames used made some otherwise old and low quality footage look more professional. Overall the documentary does a good job of making personal portrayal of Christopher's character, views and ideals.

Journal-esque notes

I've been, and perhaps always had difficulty remembering memories. Talk of them makes me wonder if my relationship with my memories, are different from those that others have, with their memories. All that remains in place of what, I assume, should be something more than random glimpses of images, is just that. On top of that I believe these glimpses of images are heavily aesthetically skewed, or altogether made up, by concepts of fascination at the time. So it would not surprise you or, in this case since I am writing for myself, me when I say I don't know who exactly I am. Attempts at thinking back or surfacing recollections of my cognitive state at a previous time are futile, resembling attempts at entering buildings and rooms, whose interior does not exist, in games, or exploring my physical surroundings, of which I'm unaware of the state or any significant details, though my imagination or in my dreams.

Anyway so as you've read I do find myself an enigma in many ways. Unriddling these hidden knots in my understanding of self or myself will perhaps further my understanding of others as well. I intend, well it's really doesn't matter whether I desire it or not, self discovery is immanent in being alive, on being on a journey of self discovery throughout my life, or at least most of my life as I probably will want to lay this beast and companion down at some point. Getting back on point, this is why I will be recording my thoughts and observations of my psychological inclinations on this blog, leaving little notes and posts about my currant psychological whereabouts, to keep track of, organize (or maybe not as I usually find myself creating chaos rather then calming it), study and leave fractions of my psychic state, at the time of writing, for an older me, in order to assist him on the same journey I am on.

Spectrum of theistic probability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability

This is a very useful tool in identifying your own position about God's existence. It breaks away from the idea that individuals are either theists or atheists. This gives more flexibility for people who aren't certain of both sides; it allows for the possibility that people many not feel one way or other about god's existence. The  positions made available by this scale is anything from De facto theist to De facto atheist.