Whom can we trust in today's society where technology puts such a buffer between people that we sometimes forget there's a real person on the other end of the phone call or on the other side of the IM window?
Well, my personal philosophy is to trust everyone until that person proves they cannot be trusted. I am not advertising that we all tell our innermost secrets to every stranger, but rather that if something isn't a major piece of information that we be honest about what we think and feel. Giving guarded answers to everything doesn't allow for anyone to learn who you really are, so then there is always some chance that there will be a falling out later down the road when you have come to consider yourselves 'good friends' and you actually start opening up.
If you trust a person with small, superficial secrets for a while and aren't betrayed, then you can move on to offering a few (not too many) secrets that are a little more personal. These might be memories from childhood or other secrets that, while you wouldn't make them public, they are removed from your present sufficiently enough that if they got out it wouldn't be the end of the world.
It should be a progression, but the progression has to start with some form of initial trust. Something like a small business investment (though I am loathe to use a business metaphor about friendship, since the two seem rather antithetical). That trust can then be allowed to grow or shrink depending on how things proceed with that person.
Oh, and someone who gossips to you about others most probably gossips about you to others, so be wary.
Oh, and if you haven't read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, you probably should. It's a really, really, really, really good short story.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Do the shuffle.
I'm in a class this semester called Puzzle, Games and Algorithms. Originally I thought it would just be an easy class that I would take for essentially free Comp. Sci. credit. It hasn't been terribly difficult, but Friday of last week shared some information that rightly blew my mind.
We were discussing a random deck of cards and Professor Snapp made the claim that if he were to shuffle the cards, then the specific permutation of cards that his shuffle would yield would never have been seen before. Most of the class disagreed with him. I agreed with him, but only because I thought he must know something that I didn't and not because I genuinely thought that the average shuffle yielded a unique deck. Well, here was the proof:
Since there are 52 distinguishable cards in a standard deck of playing cards (13 different numbers, repeated four times, but each time in a different suit), then the number of distinguishable permutations for the deck is 52!.
If you aren't sure about factorials, 52! (read 52 factorial) is equal to 52 * 51 * 50 * 49 * ... * 3 * 2 * 1 = 8 * 10^67
To put that in a little perspective he offered us a few estimates for other objects:
• Number of seconds in a century = 4.5 × 10^9.
• Number of human beings alive on Earth = 6.7 × 10^9.
• Number of Oreo cookies sold since 1912 = 4.9 × 10^11.
• Federal debt (est. in US$ on 9/10/07) = 9.0 × 10^12.
• Number of seconds that have elapsed since the Big Bang = 4 × 10^17.
• Number of distinct positions in a 3 × 3 × 3 Rubik’s cube = 4 × 10^19.
• Number of grains of sand on the earth = 10^21.
• Number of stars in the visible universe (Simon Driver, 2003) = 7 × 10^22.
• Number of atoms in a human body = 10^28.
• Mass of the sun (in kilograms) = 10^30.
• Number of legal chess positions = 10^40.
• Number of distinct positions in a 4 × 4 × 4 Rubik’s Revenge = 10^45.
• Number of permutations of 52 playing cards = 8 × 10^67.
• Number of distinct positions in a 5 × 5 × 5 Rubik’s Ultimate Cube = 10^74.
• Number of physical particles in the universe (inflationary model) = 10^80.
• Number of distinguishable games of go = 10^768
(These were copied from the PowerPoint presentation used during the lecture, found at http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~snapp/puzzles/)
Basically, even if everyone (today's population) on the earth had been shuffling a deck of cards once a second from the very instant of the Big Bang, we wouldn't have seen all the possible combinations. In fact, if every star in the visible universe had a planet just like the Earth with exactly as many people and all of those people were shuffling 52-card decks once a second beginning the second of the Big Bang, even then we would have only seen 1.876 * 10^50 diferent shuffles, leaving the rest of the 8 x 10^67 unseen. And that is a great number of unseen permutations.
And that's all I have to say.
We were discussing a random deck of cards and Professor Snapp made the claim that if he were to shuffle the cards, then the specific permutation of cards that his shuffle would yield would never have been seen before. Most of the class disagreed with him. I agreed with him, but only because I thought he must know something that I didn't and not because I genuinely thought that the average shuffle yielded a unique deck. Well, here was the proof:
Since there are 52 distinguishable cards in a standard deck of playing cards (13 different numbers, repeated four times, but each time in a different suit), then the number of distinguishable permutations for the deck is 52!.
If you aren't sure about factorials, 52! (read 52 factorial) is equal to 52 * 51 * 50 * 49 * ... * 3 * 2 * 1 = 8 * 10^67
To put that in a little perspective he offered us a few estimates for other objects:
• Number of seconds in a century = 4.5 × 10^9.
• Number of human beings alive on Earth = 6.7 × 10^9.
• Number of Oreo cookies sold since 1912 = 4.9 × 10^11.
• Federal debt (est. in US$ on 9/10/07) = 9.0 × 10^12.
• Number of seconds that have elapsed since the Big Bang = 4 × 10^17.
• Number of distinct positions in a 3 × 3 × 3 Rubik’s cube = 4 × 10^19.
• Number of grains of sand on the earth = 10^21.
• Number of stars in the visible universe (Simon Driver, 2003) = 7 × 10^22.
• Number of atoms in a human body = 10^28.
• Mass of the sun (in kilograms) = 10^30.
• Number of legal chess positions = 10^40.
• Number of distinct positions in a 4 × 4 × 4 Rubik’s Revenge = 10^45.
• Number of permutations of 52 playing cards = 8 × 10^67.
• Number of distinct positions in a 5 × 5 × 5 Rubik’s Ultimate Cube = 10^74.
• Number of physical particles in the universe (inflationary model) = 10^80.
• Number of distinguishable games of go = 10^768
(These were copied from the PowerPoint presentation used during the lecture, found at http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~snapp/puzzles/)
Basically, even if everyone (today's population) on the earth had been shuffling a deck of cards once a second from the very instant of the Big Bang, we wouldn't have seen all the possible combinations. In fact, if every star in the visible universe had a planet just like the Earth with exactly as many people and all of those people were shuffling 52-card decks once a second beginning the second of the Big Bang, even then we would have only seen 1.876 * 10^50 diferent shuffles, leaving the rest of the 8 x 10^67 unseen. And that is a great number of unseen permutations.
And that's all I have to say.
Monday, September 14, 2009
How long has it been since I posted?
I have successfully completed the second week of my stint as a sophomore Computer Science major at UVM. I wrote my first program for Intermediate Programming in Java (I hope that I remember all the syntax soon, else the upcoming projects are going to suck). I am really quite confused about boolean circuits and what, exactly, they are doing. I see lines and then lines coming off of lines and lines going into gates and out of gates and into other gates and I am simply lost. Ho hum.
Three of my courses appear to be near-carbon copies, too. Two of them, incidentally, are taught by the same professor (Snapp, if you were curious). They all basically have taken the ideas of computer logic and are just applying it slightly differently. One looks at the actual structures of computer math, another at applications of computer-style math in the real world and the third looks that the probability that computer-math-based programs and processes will work (among other things, though).
The courses, since you asked (I don't think I actually have any readers, but whatever) are Discrete Structures (called Discrete Mathematics by most universities), Probability and Statistics for Computer Science Majors and Puzzles, Games and Algorithms. Puzzles, Games and Algorithms is probably my most interesting (and, incidentally, easiest) course this semester. We're going to the Great Corn Maze in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont on the 26th of this month. If I remember to, I'll post about it.
As a shameless plugs, I would like to invite everyone to use Blackle.com as much as possible as opposed to Google. It is powered by Google but uses a black screen which saves kilowatt-hours (but only in a significant amount if a great many people use it).
Also, I would like to post this video for your enjoyment (it's quite old and I've seen it countless times):
Three of my courses appear to be near-carbon copies, too. Two of them, incidentally, are taught by the same professor (Snapp, if you were curious). They all basically have taken the ideas of computer logic and are just applying it slightly differently. One looks at the actual structures of computer math, another at applications of computer-style math in the real world and the third looks that the probability that computer-math-based programs and processes will work (among other things, though).
The courses, since you asked (I don't think I actually have any readers, but whatever) are Discrete Structures (called Discrete Mathematics by most universities), Probability and Statistics for Computer Science Majors and Puzzles, Games and Algorithms. Puzzles, Games and Algorithms is probably my most interesting (and, incidentally, easiest) course this semester. We're going to the Great Corn Maze in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont on the 26th of this month. If I remember to, I'll post about it.
As a shameless plugs, I would like to invite everyone to use Blackle.com as much as possible as opposed to Google. It is powered by Google but uses a black screen which saves kilowatt-hours (but only in a significant amount if a great many people use it).
Also, I would like to post this video for your enjoyment (it's quite old and I've seen it countless times):
Friday, September 4, 2009
The post that contains the monologue about the decent friend
What, exactly, is a decent friend? There are fun friends, silly friends, obnoxious friends, outgoing friends, introverted friends, useless friends, caring friends, casual friends, reliable friends, etc. But what, exactly, is a decent friend?
This is a question that bugs me every time I take a facebook survey that asks me if I have a best friend. Surely, before I can honestly name a "best" friend I must have a concept of a decent friend.
To be honest, tonight I was talking to one of my more compassionate friends (who, unfortunately, is no longer near to me geographically) and it came about that I was called a decent friend. I had to take issue with that because I haven't made for myself a clear definition of a decent friend. I will try to now. I didn't say I would come up with a definition, mind, just that I'd try.
Out of all of the friend-types, the caring friend is almost always considered the best. But I don't know that I can accept that as an absolute. Sometimes it isn't enough to care, but the caring must necessarily translate into always doing the right thing. But is it even necessary for a decent friend to always do the right thing for the other friends? I can't help but to say no, since that would seem to indicate a "perfect" friend, and that's an abstract that is absolutely impossible.
So, I think that what I have to settle on is a friend that, whenever possible (or, perhaps just more than seventy-five percent of the time that it's possible) does what s/he has to for a friend in need. A decent friend doesn't have to like doing nice things or doesn't have to enjoy being there for a friend, but the decent friend will always set him/herself aside (or, again, the majority of the time) in order to help his/her friends.
There aren't many decent friends, are there?
This is a video that I particularly enjoy:
This is a question that bugs me every time I take a facebook survey that asks me if I have a best friend. Surely, before I can honestly name a "best" friend I must have a concept of a decent friend.
To be honest, tonight I was talking to one of my more compassionate friends (who, unfortunately, is no longer near to me geographically) and it came about that I was called a decent friend. I had to take issue with that because I haven't made for myself a clear definition of a decent friend. I will try to now. I didn't say I would come up with a definition, mind, just that I'd try.
Out of all of the friend-types, the caring friend is almost always considered the best. But I don't know that I can accept that as an absolute. Sometimes it isn't enough to care, but the caring must necessarily translate into always doing the right thing. But is it even necessary for a decent friend to always do the right thing for the other friends? I can't help but to say no, since that would seem to indicate a "perfect" friend, and that's an abstract that is absolutely impossible.
So, I think that what I have to settle on is a friend that, whenever possible (or, perhaps just more than seventy-five percent of the time that it's possible) does what s/he has to for a friend in need. A decent friend doesn't have to like doing nice things or doesn't have to enjoy being there for a friend, but the decent friend will always set him/herself aside (or, again, the majority of the time) in order to help his/her friends.
There aren't many decent friends, are there?
This is a video that I particularly enjoy:
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