/** * file: karbytes_06_october_2023.txt * type: plain-text * date: 06_OCTOBER_2023 * author: karbytes * license: PUBLIC_DOMAIN */ operand : operator :: object : relationship_between_objects. * * * operand : operator :: physical_object : abstract_object. * * * As a means of maximizing the likelihood that I experience what I want (particularly by adhering to my personal rules of conduct), I sometimes enable myself to deviate from such rules because doing so seems to remove some of the incentive to, after a sufficiently long period of exerting effort to constantly obey each of those rules while the costs of doing so seem to be outweighing the benefits of doing so, rebel against self imposed limits which seem to cost me energy in order to maintain and to resist defying. Why bother having personal ethical standards if I do not always adhere to them? I have preferences which clearly distinguish what I want to experience more of from what I want to experience less of. If I adhere to those standards more than 80% of the time, then I feel like I am asserting my preferences (in terms of how I conduct myself (which is based on how I expect the universe to react to what I anticipate doing)) but not to the extent that I am being too rigidly dogmatic to enjoy my life and to revise my worldview in response to my knowledge changing. I believe that, as a human being, it is very important to use very specific, precise, and "executable" wording when defining preferences in written form and to keep such writing accessible on "the cloud" for safe keeping and universal access. Even writing down a prose-poem about some mundane sensual experience I recently had is a way of communicating with nature what I wish to remember instead of to forget and what kinds of things I have expressed a preference for more of (because I do hypothesize and feel that it is strategic for me to pretend that I attract more of what I want into existence by focusing on it instead of on something else though even that is a bit myopic, presumptuous, and maybe even megalomaniacal). (I still feel compelled to adhere to the ontological position that free will is entirely illusory (within the context of a deterministic universe) and that every person is equally powerless to effect any outcome (or perhaps I am willing to entertain the notion that a person can voluntarily take actions towards attaining some prefered condition of existence but that person cannot voluntarily choose what that person finds preferable)). (I feel compelled to publicly promote the views of free will which I expressed in the web page named AGENCY in the website named Karlina Object dot WordPress dot Com (and that web page posits that agency (i.e. free will (i.e. volition)) is a virtual phenomenon which can be measured and which is directly proportional to universe modeling accuracy and coordination between the respective agent's hardware and software (such that agency could be increased or decreased much the way a laptop computer's processing speed increases as more central processing unit cores are added to that computer's internal hardware circuitry)). Bottom line (asumption, premise, argument, claim, assertion, declaration, proposition): I have preferences and prefer to obey my preferences no less than 80% of the time (until I decide that it is preferable to change my preferences). This may or may not be worth noting, but I decided to include the following in this document anyway: I claim to not take pleasure in the suffering of people other than myself (but some people claim that I do take pleasure in the suffering of people other than myself (perhaps because doing so is common and often socially encouraged)). I thought that the most essential ethic (and all-encompassing ethic) would be the intention to always strive to minimize the net suffering in the encompassing universe because doing so seems to favor the intention to remove all intentional barriers to flourishing (unless those barriers are consiously self imposed). When allowed to flourish, I think creatures tend to choose what enhances and sustains their survival and thrival and not what hinders such things. I think that there are some conditions which force almost any human being to crave sadistic forms of pleasure via intentionally harming other sentient creatures. Such conditions include genetic disposition and environmental conditioning (i.e. learning). I will do my best to avoid proliferating such conditions and to avoid being subject to such conditions. That way, I can minimize how much I personally contribute to the pool of suffering throughout my encompassing universe. In short, perhaps the easiest and most effective way to be of service to humanity is to get out of its way; to not impede its autonomy; to not interupt its discourse; to not spoil the movie it is in the midst of pretending to be surprised by. I do my best to not intentionally bother people but I do not expect most people to be as adamant about doing the same. That's probably because I have had to be out in the world alone more than most people do (and that is because I prefer to be alone rather than in the company of friends or family). Being on my own seems to be the most suitable conditions for me to delve deeply into philosophical inquiries and to generate profound and interesting ideas. Also being alone means that I do not need some animal on a leash at my beck and call to validate my sense of importance. I take up enough space as it is just by being a spoiled Californian in the year 2023 demanding to maximize my human agency via my own efforts. I do not need to make someone else take a loss in order for me to feel that I am experiencing a gain of value. It is a bit vain for me to say so. Hence, to avoid getting punished for being an arrogant, self-righteous braggart who uses oversized vocabularies, I will do my best to keep my face-to-face speech simple, plain, humble, and enabling of "might makes right" rhetoric. I might as well be an innocent bystander whenever I think someone is being verbally abused because it's free speech after all and people need practice in learning how to tolerate verbal abuse without retaliating in kind. I would rather allocate resources towards education, arts, and sports than towards combat readiness. I would rather the world be ruled by wimpy pacifist intellectuals than ruled by military dictators and their armed minions. Why would wimpy intellectuals engage in war when they could solve disputes more diplomatically and with more cleverness? Right now the fear mongering war pigs seem to have humanity in a hostage situation. Violent terrorists seem to be enabled to perpetuate lethal and civilization-destroying violence for years on end without anyone seriously intervening as though it were the best anyone on Earth can do. I trust the people who are younger than me to be much more humane than their predecessors were (by virtue of having better conditions to live in especially in terms of education) and to be much kinder and much smarter stewards of human civilization. I trust them to implement solutions to problems which do not lead to more problems. For instance, I would expect future stewards of human civilization to favor harvesting solar energy through photovoltaic cells and other devices over harvesting energy from nuclear fusion blasts (because the former creates zero toxic waste while the latter produces a non negligible amount of toxic waste which may be impossible to keep securely stored for the duration that it is radioactive enough to harm humans). * * * Some of this note (the content following the analogies about operands and operators) is not what I would consider to be a good representation of what I really feel and believe about the world in general. Honestly, I think most people are a lot more intelligent and interesting than I give them credit for. I do not mean to impose limits on what humans can experience and achieve by my words. In order to make my words more useful for my ends in the future, I will probably limit what I write about to the subject matter which my primary website (i.e. Karlina Object dot WordPress dot Com) focuses on: metaphysics, software, and eventually (and hopefully) actual physics (particularly quantum mechanics).