Consider

Consider three men:

One spends his time in front of a mirror. He dotes on his appearance. He sculpts his hair. He bathes and perfumes his body. He enjoys working out and feeling his muscular form develop into the ideal image he had in mind. He takes the right blend of nutritional supplements. He dresses fashionably, always wearing the appropriate outfit for the occasion. He walks with grace and smiles a practiced smile.

The other spends his time in books. He reads and analyzes and writes, to keep his mind sharp and his wit sharper. He is versed in popular and obscure languages. He plays piano, guitar, and accordion. He enjoys a game of chess, or Go, or poker. He studies mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, linguistics, and is always looking for connections between the subjects. He smiles when he finds beauty in unexpected places. He speaks with conviction and longs for a deeper understanding.

The third man spends his time helping others. He listens. He gives advice on relationships, on family problems, on the myriad of stresses that weigh on people. He volunteers. He tries to treat others with respect, kindness, and honesty. He pays attention to others' needs and acts with compassion and sympathy. He smiles when he knows that he made a difference. He has loyal friends and ardent followers. His reputation shines like a polished set of armor.

Some define vanity to be an excessive opinion of one's self-appearance, but there is no sense in limiting that pride to the physical self. These three men all work to better themselves, though their goals are vastly different. They all uphold an image of themselves, an icon upon the pedestal of their own expectations. Vanity or conceit or narcissism, whatever it be called, can sneak up on us, and without warning, replace the man with a painted shell. And if the shell should crack one day, would we find anything remaining underneath?

Catching up

As I said before, it is possible to stream interactive media the same way we stream high def video. Well, IGN has an article about OnLive cloud gaming. The future is catching up to us fast.

If this works, it will invalidate the current paradigm of perennially upgrading personal hardware. I'm sure the big tech companies are already thinking about this. If there's no more demand for faster and more powerful consumer electronics, what will happen to Moore's Law?

Meaning and purpose are subjective

"What is the meaning of life?" is not the right question. Rather, ask "What is the meaning of MY life?" And it's OK to not know. Most people don't.

Language and concepts

Concepts and words are not equal < Signal13 > 03/13 23:13:56

To draw an analogy to programming, concepts are rich data structures, and words are pointers to those structures. For example, we all know what the concept of love is. But the word "love" is just a label for the multitude of feelings that we associate with the concept. The question "what is love?" is a dereferencing; you are trying to get to the meaning behind the word.

To answer a question you didn't ask, then, yes, it is possible to have concepts without words to describe them. For example, I knew that some people can find perverse joy in other people's misfortunes, but not until recently did I learn the word "schadenfreude".

An example of non-verbal thought:
Let's say you see you pretty girl (or guy) at the local coffee shop. You're looking at her and imagining all the fun things you can do with her. You're definitely having thoughts, but almost none of it is in words.

Now imagine me sitting here trying to answer your question. Most of my thoughts are in the form of language, because it gives me the power to label these abstract concepts and make them manageable. Philosophy isn't like boobs; you can't put your finger on it without using words.

War story

This happened years ago.

I loved playing Battlefield 2 and had logged hundreds of hours in an attack chopper, but my favorite moment in the game was as commander of the US Marines on Wake Island. The US forces had taken the beach and were fighting hard to get across the bridge to the main island, but the Chinese had tanks and snipers covering it, so the fighting was at a stalemate. I called in artillery on the Chinese position whenever I could, and after one sat-scan I noticed a friendly blip on the Chinese side, among about a dozen red blips; one of my soldiers had swam across and penetrated enemy lines. I thought, "oh well, he's not going to live very long being surrounded like that," so I ordered artillery on that position anyway. Collateral damage, etc.

Next time artillery was ready (a few minutes later), I scanned over and that US soldier was STILL THERE. I got on comm with him and said "how are you still alive? I bombed the crap out of that hill. How many kills do you have?" "I don't know, I lost track," he said. Apparently this guy was sneaking behind enemy lines and killing dozens of enemies, evading tanks, taking medkits from Chinese medics, knifing snipers, and just being a badass Rambo. He had over 20 kills in a game where being on foot means your life expectancy is less than 50 seconds.

I was so blown away; I felt like I had to get him out or at least help him, so I asked the Seahawk pilot to fly over and extract him. Meanwhile I gave him everything I could: flying UAV scans, spotting targets for him. By this time there was probably a whole bunch of pissed-off Chinese hunting for him, but I kept spotting them for him so he'd be ready to shoot. By the time the chopper got there he scored 4 or 5 more kills.

Then a noob J-10 pilot kamikazed his plane into the chopper and blew them up. War sucks.

Possibilities using current technology

• A fully 3D, navigable Google streetview. Right now each view is a panoramic photo wrapped around to give the illusion of perspective. You can navigate using the standard WASD keys, but the camera is stuck on a rail (the Google streetview van). There's software being developed that can automatically construct 3D geometry based on photos. Using the vast database of panoramas from Google, it is possible to recreate entire cities down to the pedestrian level, with freely changeable perspective. I'm guessing the Google team already has a working alpha.
  
  
• Streaming games that are rendered at powerful graphics servers. Why spend 1000$ for a machine that can play Crysis when you can stream video output from rendering farms? Most of us already have enough bandwidth to stream HD media. The main problem will be lag, due to the need to have a streaming buffer of a second or so. I'm sure programmers can find a way around that. Word is AMD is already working on this, but if this becomes successful it will destroy their market for PC video cards.
  
  
• Combine the two technologies above to get fully realized virtual cities. I hear Tokyo is beautiful this time of year.