Perception

This week we have been focusing on coming into the third and final phase of our inquiry project. My final book that I am reading is called Lucid Dreaming by Stephan LaBerge, Ph.D. I have only just begun reading it, but already the book seems very interesting, informative, and dare I say innovative in its insights into the world of lucid dreaming. This is a very welcome change from my previous book, On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins, which quite frankly, was written as if it was intended to be read by a 4 year old. On a minor tangent, I was actually supposed to read The Lucid Dreamer by Malcolm Godwin, which I have heard very good things about and most definitely still plan on reading later on when I have the funds (the book is out of print and has become very expensive), but until then, I am content to wrap up my study of consciousness and perception with Steven LaBerge's analyzation the concept of lucid dreaming.

To speak more specifically, there are several things in particular I already enjoy about this book: the scientific grounding of ideas and claims in factual evidence and studies, the mature language and writing style, the external cd that comes with it (containing tracks that build upon themes in the book as well as guided techniques for lucid dreaming), and the concise nature of the author (at no point does he speak in excess or repetition, thus far at least). Anyway, I look forward to diving deeper into this book as we finish up our study on perception.

Wrapping up Tragedy and Comedy

This week as came back from break things have been really pretty mellow, the only thing we really worked on was closing up our Tragedy and Comedy project by producing our final tribute/re-enactment. Jason and I chose to do a voice-over recording of the second scene of act four, which is the scene where Feste is toying with Malvolio's head during his imprisonment. Below is our artist statement and link to our recording.

Taunt of Malvolio

Artist Statement:

We chose to re-enact scene where Feste is messing with Malvolio during his imprisonment. For two reasons, we chose to do so in the form of a voice-over. The first and foremost reason for this was that Shakespeare’s plays were written with the lines to dictate the nature of the speech, and we thought we could most clearly, and directly attempt this through a voice-over reading of the scene. The second reason was that we thought doing purely a voice-over reading of the scene would exemplify Feste’s impersonation of one Sir Topas, and his dialogue as both characters with Malvolio. We should like our audience to consider how Feste is clearing toying with Malvolio’s fragile state as he plays back and forth between the Fool and Sir Topas.

Inquiry Study

This week we basically just wrapped up our 2nd third of the Inquiry project, and to do so, we had to write an essay on the second book we read and how it related to our driving question. Below are two excerpts from my essay that I believe summarize my new perspective based off my second book (Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence) and our driving question.

Recently I read Jeff Hawkins’ On Intelligence with the intention of answering the driving question: “How does consciousness define the way we perceive the world, and how will this change as our technology advances and we explore alternate states of consciousness?” I chose to study this particular question because personally I am very interested in how the human mind functions, and after hearing about Dr. Kurzweil’s theories on the future merger between biological and technological evolution, I wanted to learn for myself and form my own opinions on what consciousness truly is and how it may be altered by future advancements.

...I have extrapolated that the advance of reverse brain-engineering will not alter our consciousness, but how we perceive the world by allowing us to maximize the potential of our mental capacity, the specifics of which will unfold as the advance comes to fruition. And, in essence, if we are to be able to reconstruct the human brain and maximize its potential we must do so with the guiding concept of using inductive thought as a foundation, rather than computational sequences. As for my perspective on my driving question, I do believe that Consciousness is and will always remain as that which experiences the world, through emotions, experiences, and impressions made upon it. However, as we move toward the point where our perception of reality is drastically enhanced, I do believe that we may be able experience consciousness in a more pure manner that we are not yet able to comprehend, without the constant impressions of the outside world.

Wheels Keep Turning

This week, as you may have guessed, we continued to study Twelfth Night, which was again, fun interesting, and slightly repetitive. I am looking forward though to making a voice acted play version of a scene from twelfth night, I think it'd be really fun to have to portray that much character through only voices. I've also been reading more of Jeff Hawkin's On Intelligence, and to be honest, I'm really enjoying his extreme lack of formality, but I am getting excited for his thoughts to play out as he delineates the core structure of the book.

I feel like second semester senior year is honestly slowing down to a crawl in all our classes, except for calculus. I find it almost fatiguing to endure endless hours of Twelfth Night, not say I don't like the underlying reason we're studying, its just the lack of productivity that leaves me feeling, lack luster I suppose.

Love & Neuroscience

This week all we did was act out scenes from Twelfth Night. I suppose we're learning about love, and different perspectives on it across time and gender. I enjoy what we're learning, but frankly, the play, and having to read and act it out everyday is getting a bit old. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, but, I finally got On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins (my second book, about reverse brain engineering), and I'm very excited to start it. It should be an interesting exploration into how the human brain differs from our computers today, and how we are trying to create artificial thought.

The Singularity is Near

Ths week we had to write an abstract of our last book we read, mine was The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Though the topic is excessively complex, this is what I managed to come up with:

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil is a book about the implications of the rapid exponential growth of technology, and the point when technological evolution merges with biological evolution. Kurzweil’s book delineates the past, present, and future course of the exponential growth of technology creating an excellently well articulated, thoroughly supported and cited explanation of his ideas of the evolution of technology. The Singularity is an era that incorporates artificial intelligence gaining the ability to access its source code and become infinitely more intelligent, our merger with that technology to allow us to become infinitely more intelligent (and become resistant to disease and other inherent vulnerabilities in our biological structure), living forever as the life expectancy per year increases more than a year per year, a revolution in genetics where we can alter to genetic structure as biological beings without limit, living partially in virtual reality that we create for ourselves, augmenting reality as we perceive it, expanding our intelligence throughout the universe, waking up the universe with intelligent nano-technology to bring in into a sentient consciousness saturated with intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil Transcendent Man Premiere!

This week I was fortunate enough to get to travel up to LA to see the premiere of the movie 'Transcendent Man' which was a documentary about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil. The premiere consisted of Kurzweil introducing his ideas and the film, and then of course, next was the screening. The movie offered a really cool insight into actually seeing the human side of Kurzweil (hah), and see a thorough documentary about his ideas, the implications (be them positive, or negative), the opinions of many top scientists who both agree and disagree with Kurzweil, and the innovations actually being made in the field of technology. And, as if the movie itself wasn't great enough on it's own, I actually got meet and speak with Kurzweil after the premiere! It was such an incredible experience, I can't believe I got the opportunity.

On a related note, as I become more and more of a Singulartarian (someone who embraces the implications of The Singularity), I've been informing more and more people of it. Actually as I'm writing this I'm having a lively debate with five friends of mine, answering questions, and watching speeches by Kurzweil, to help inform them about The Singularity. It's always a blast informing (and trying to convince) someone new about the profound implications about the rapid exponential growth of technology, and the profound implications of The Singularity as it first, offends them, then terrifies them, as they try to resist it's concepts, and eventually start to embrace the it's logic, then begin to fearfully explore it's implications and become excited.

Romance

This week we have been partially focusing on investigating romance. Over the course of this, we have asked ourselves several questions. One of the questions we asked was if a true love = a soul mate (the one and only). I argued that true love was based off a connection that is made that feels deep and unique based off of unnatural levels of understanding and common ground. It is statistically unlikely that one would find several people with these qualities, but it is also unlikely that one would only person with qualities near these. So the true love is determined between a small number of these people, one of which typically more so than the others, which would be defined as "the soul mate" making the others look still as "true loves" but not the one soul mate. So in essence I agreed with the statement. Another question that was asked was if love conquers all, which frankly if you look at completely objectively and rationally is obviously impossible in certain situations, for example, if your partner dies, it's not really an overcomable obstacle now is it? Silly questions aside, it's a fun and interesting topic that usually inspires some lively debate.

This past week we have progressed further in our inquiry project. We continued to read Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, which proves to be be ceaselessly interesting as it presents daunting concept after another. We have also begun contacting people to interview. The people we would truly like to speak with are the authors of the books we're reading, but seeing as how this is generally unlikely, we are also attempting to contact people at local institutions who are in the same fields as the our topics of study. As far as I know, we have not successfully coordinated an interview yet, but my hopes are still high of hopefully speaking to a professor or perhaps even an author.

On a more interesting note, Adam, Sam, and I have all been attempting to improve our recollection of our dreams, and attain lucid dreaming states. While each of us seems to be getting close (note when I say close, I do mean we were nearly there, but I am not saying we could easily replicate this, or will certainly attain lucid dreaming anytime soon) in various ways, none of us have been fully successful. I do look forward to continuing our research, reading, and exploration into the dreamworld.

Inquiry Project

This week we have been working on the preliminary stages of our inquiry project. We are currently in the process of finding people to interview, and attempting to get tickets to see Ray Kurzweil speak at a premiere of his new movie 'Transcendent Man'. It's stacking up to look like it's going to be a very interesting project, studying the Singularity, reverse brain engineering, and states of lucid dreaming. As it turns out, we are reading the same book on lucid dreaming that Will Haase did when he was attempting it in college, so I feel as though we've made a good choice in that category, considering the literally dozens of books to decide between on the topic. I'm really hoping we'll be able to actually speak with Kurzweil after his movie and speech, that would just be phenomonal, and, as far fetched as it might be, we're going to make the effort to get him to come speak for Will's endersession if all goes well. Well, the next steps for us are to secure solid interviewees, and make a dent in The Singularity is Near, which on its own should be quite a feat, seeing how dense and intricate Kurzweil's theories and arguments are. All in all I'm very excited to get in over my head in this project, and hopefully be able to dig my way out.

On Consciousness

This week a lot of my attention was focused our upcoming reading project for English. In my group we will be doing a study of consciousness reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Jeff Hawkin's On Intelligence, and Lucid Dreaming. We hope to gain a better understanding of how we perceive the world around us, the affects of technology on our expanding consciousness in the future, and how the brain functions from a neurological standpoint. Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is a book about the merger between biological evolution and technological evolution, while Lucid Dreaming explores various areas of consciousness and the concept of lucid dreaming.

Also, Adam and I are both hoping to be chosen for Will's endersession on exploring consciousness, and we feel that this project will give us a good foundation going into his class. For the endersession there will be a lot of readings consciousness,and having started The Singularity I can already tell it's going to be helpful to be used to reading dense texts on the scientific aspect of neurological function. I am looking very forward to starting this project and learning about the way our brain perceives reality and the world around us, and possibly being accepted into Will's endersession on exploring consciousness.

Language

This week in English we did various readings on langauge and watched a video on the origin of English. One of the readings in particular were pretty interesting because they talked about the location shift and endangerment of various languages in the world today. Interestingly enough approximately 800 dying languages are represented within the city of New York, many of which are spoken by a higher population there, than it the languages country of origin. Another reading that I found to be particularly interesting was about how the French seem to be losing there language to various other cultures. They react to this in a very odd manner, by which I mean the react somewhat indifferently to the fact that their language is spoken by less French than other cultures, but at the same time, with contempt at other peoples attempting to adopt the language. This way of thinking is not one I am accustomed to for several reasons, the first being that in America, we are essentially a melting-pot of cultures and langauges (as NYC so aptly demonstrates). The second reason is represented abroad in Africa. I have traveled several times to the dark continent, and have gotten a few insights into various cultures there, and after seeing them, I realized that languages there seem to generously and happily shared between peoples. So with these two things defining the way I view the distribution of language between cultures, I was surprised at the French's reaction. I summation, I suppose language can be a thing of personal pride to a nation (or culture), as well as something that is designed to bring serval diverse cultures together, such as Swahili.

This week I finished up reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which was definitely a huge read, but was very rewarding and worth it. Rand's extreme view on capitalism and socialism made for an interesting story line in a projection of America as it falls to socialism. Whether you agree or disagree with Rand's philosophy, you cant help but enjoy the way she so elegantly portrays it through a complex storyline, and beautiful descriptons.

After reading the book, I had to write an essay answering whether or not i believed selfishness to be virtuous in both a practical and moral sense. I chose to argue that it was for two main reasons. First, selfishness implies all men living for themselves, which inherently implies all men's freedom from having to live for eachother. 2) Selfishness and freedom from living for others allows uninhibited rationality (no emotional restraints), to breed optimal success.

Overall I found both the book and the topic to be very thought-provoking.

Selfishness as a Virtue

This week we have been focusing a lot on analyzing the poems we chose for honors, as well as finding articles that relate to our essential questions. My groups essential questions is: "Is selfishness a virtue?"

This question was inspired by the book we are reading for class, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The novel is essentially a 1200 page explanation of Rand's philosophy, which is that of an extremist capitalist. The novel constantly delineates through the story how those who are selfishly independent in their business and affairs are the ones who succeed and manage to stay afloat in a sinking economy that is turning more and more socialist.

This capitalist mentality is shared in Badger Clark's poem, The Westerner. His poem also greatly pushes the importance of independence and making one's own success rather than sailing along on the success and accomplishments of others. Throughout the poem it becomes apparent that Clark would also agree that selfishness is a virtue, due to the very strict version of independence pushed which I elaborate on in my essay delineating the relation of the poem to my essential question.

So far after reading the majority of Atlas Shrugged and Clark's The Westerner I would definitely have to say that in a business and career related sense, that I agree selfishness is a virtue.

Applications!

It's hard to believe that several of my applications are nearing completion. It's crazy to essentially see the the fruition of all your work for 12 years just off ahead. I feel like I've almost got my supplements for the UC's done (so thats 4 out of sixteen schools down), and I've also finished the "Find X" supplement for U of Chicago. I've gotta say, thought that essay was gonna be an abysmal struggle, but it ended up being an excellent opportunity for me to give a little insight to who I am. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that theme constant throughout the rest of my essay prompts, supplements or short answer. My next step I suppose would be to finalize my UC Apps before the system crashes, and submit those essays for one of the scholarships Tenesha informed me of, interestingly enough, the prompts are exactly the same, word for word. Beyond that I've just got to keep working on supplements and fill out the few individual seperate applications that are independent of the Common App. All in all its a crazy process, I can't wait to see how it all turns out, so I guess I'm gonna buckle down over break and really put some quality into these essays.

Tragedy Creation

As the date grows nearer where our tragedy piece is due, I'm leaning more away from making my musical representation of tragedy as a guitar piece, towards making an electronic, progressive house or trance track. I feel like certain progressive house riffs and and most trance riffs carry lots of emotion, especially comparison to guitar riffs. I'm not saying I don't believe one can create tragic music with a guitar, I just believe the certain styles of electronic music can carry more poignant sounds. A progressive house artist whose style I will be attempting to emulate to some extent is 'Deadmau5'.

This is a track by deadmau5 that is a good representation of what I am attempting to create: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrZX8Y49xMY

I hope to be able to create a piece that fluidly integrates both major and minor riffs, and some that hover somewhere inbetween. Through the fluctuation in major and minor sounds I hope to create music that aptly represents and can be interpreted as tragic. I believe progressive house more than trance carries the minor emotions associated with tragedy, as trance tends to be more uplifting or energetic, although both are usually emotionally powerful.

Tragedy Essay

Below is an excerpt from my essay on tragedy delineating what I believe to be the perfect tragedy. Any feedback (whether it be on the writing itself, or my ideas) is more than welcome, and greatly appreciated.

"I believe the perfect tragedy is one that particularly resonates with the audience, because when a member of the audience can directly relate the tragedy to an event or pattern in their own life, it will resonate with them on a much deeper level. I believe a tragic hero that is of great importance and great fame isn’t a very relatable character to most people, considering most people aren’t famous, for if they were, fame would mean nothing and cease to exist. It is here that I take issue with Socrates’ and Aristotle’s approach to the perfect tragedy. I believe that the perfect tragedy is one centered around the common man; in this sense, I side with Arthur Miller. This is because, clearly, the character relatable to the vast majority of people, is the ‘common man’. I also agree with Miller that the tragic hero (the common man) should be eventually forced into a situation where he must choose between himself and his principles/morals, that results in him sacrificing himself for what he believes in. I say this because it a tragedy where this occurs teaches morality and loyalty to oneself through the tragedy. This facet of what I believe to make up the perfect tragedy is also in alignment with most of ancient Greek tragedy (and what Socrates and Aristotle believed to be the perfect tragedy) in the sense that the audience learns a valuable lesson they without having to go through a detrimental experience themselves. Finally, I believe that tragedy is greatly enhanced when a layer of irony is added. This is where I believe that Ibsen touched on a key facet of creating the perfect tragedy. Ibsen stated that tragedy should be about those who were doomed from the start; born into a world they had no control over, and were judged negatively for not being able to take control. This is a very extreme version of irony, but the fact that the tragic hero never had any actually chance at success, no matter how hard they struggle, makes the story all the more tragic and poignant."

I attempted to thoroughly relate my ideas to the opinions of great authors and my those connections eminent. I also tried to make the ideas flow in a logical and easy to process way. So if anyone should like to give me feedback on those things specifically, I would be very grateful.

Creating a Tragedy

For the upcoming tragedy project, wherein we must create a piece of media that we believe embodies tragedy, I chose to create a song. I chose music because I believe the progression of sound through major and minor is a great and beautiful representation of tragedy. As a song moves from calm to sad and minor, creating a sound of dissonance, then moves into a happy major lift inspiring catharsis, and then slowly moves back into mellow and slightly minor, it creates a story of emotion following that of tragedy. I believe music is a great medium to represent tragedy, especially when instrumental. This is because it sets the stage with the emotional rollercoaster, and allows the person listening to connect to it personally, letting whatever tragic experience(s) they've had be projected onto the emotional flow of the music. It is this connection makes music so deep and impacting, which is why I believe it is the perfect medium, whereas others may tell a great tragic story, but if a person is unable to relate to it, it will not be as profoundly appreciated. So, I am choosing to write instrumental song on the guitar that follows the 'rollercoaster' pattern I described earlier, to depict tragedy as best I can.

Tragedy & Empathy

Just the other day we finished Oedipus Rex, which is praised as the perfect tragedy. It's interesting to me how the perfect tragedy thousands of years ago was presented in such an elegant form of media (a play), and today we consume and crave tragic stories portrayed in so many other forms of media. We watch and enjoy empathetically struggling with characters from the most poignant of stories, whether we see the stories played out in movies, books, plays, TV, or anything else. We as people can connect to emotionally moving stories no matter what the context. When I see people tearing up over tragic stories portrayed in such simple forms of media such as TV shows, it makes me wonder why they still carry such weight, no matter what the medium. If I had to make a guess, I would say it is because the brain functions off of recognition of various patterns, which is what defines our ability to be intelligent and think. Because of this, it seems to me that no matter what the artistic medium used to portray tragedy, be it photography, literature, cinematography, or any other, people will react very strongly on an emotional level if they are able to relate the to the tragedy in the story.

Atlas Shrugged Motif & Commentary on Greek (Theatrical) Tragedy

As I've continued reading Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged', her motif has become increasingly apparent, that being that capitalism is the best way to structure an economy and that socialism comes absolutely nowhere near. It is represented blatantly, almost agressively through the continued socialist style laws being passed by the 'looters' and by all the successful businessmen and entrepreneurs leaving the country mysteriously save for a few. She makes good arguments through her representations of the decline of businesses and the economy at the hands of the socialist laws being passed rapidly.

After beginning to study Greek Tragedy I find it interesting how far our perfomering arts stories of tragedy are in purpose and design from that of which they used to be in ancient Greece. By this I mean that stories of tragedy used to be designed so as to teach the audience something through the folley of the main character, this way, they learned about life and morality without having to actually make the error (experienced by the protagonist) themselves. In the modern day, stories of tragedy and suffering often teach nothing to the viewer, rather they are in place to take the viewer on an emotional rollercoaster. Often times it is a rollercoaster the average viewer would never normally experience, or one that the average viewer can relate to.