Sunday, April 3, 2011

Part 1 of an unspecified number.

Greetings.

For those of you interested in reading about what I am up to recently and/or currently, read on. Otherwise, just skip to the end, where this thing will... end.


"Doing the same things year after year and expecting different results has been used as one definition of insanity."

The statement above, for those who are interested, I took the liberty of quoting (quite) directly from the first or an early chapter of the 2006 edition of a book titled Make Winning a Habit, which was authored by Rick Page. Quite interesting, I thought, when I read the thing. (Incidentally, the exact reason as to why I was reading such a book at that time is best left unexplored, at least for the time being.)

However, the reason why I thought it was interesting can indeed be safely published, and the reason is this:
The statement would reflect my life quite accurately if every instance of the word year were replaced with the word day.

I mean, the statement implies that one set of conditions can only lead to one consequence, which is basically what makes the scientific method works. Pretty much set in stone, inarguable.

Or is it?

Personally, I believe in the concept of function in the mathematical sense, which is explained above. I believe that we can recreate any situation, provided we know its cause. I have no objection to the concept.

Which leads us to the inevitable question, as posed in the statement by Mr. Page, on the matter of my sanity.

Am I indeed insane?

Of course, all problems of the above statement(s) can be reconciled if we accept the fact that we do not know all the variables in the function, thus preserving the possibility that one set of initial conditions (as we perceive) might lead to different consequences, but that is a bit too mature and perhaps too sane for my tastes.

And that does not answer the question of my sanity.

This is nearly the end of this post. For those of you who tried to skip to the end as I suggested, thank you for taking the suggestion, but this is not quite the end yet. For those of you who read the whole thing, I have nothing further to add. For now.

End.

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