Mon 30 Nov 2009
Alan Turing is a true hero of mine – as a computer scientist and a philosopher. He was clearly a genius and a good man too I think, humble and introverted yet authoritative when necessary. It was a few years after studying Turing’s work academically that I learned about the great tragedy inflicted upon him – his forced chemical castration and subsequent death by suicide due to his conviction for ‘gross indecency’, a tragically ironic charge given what was done to him in the name of decency. The story always makes me profoundly sad.
When I saw this event that’s being organised by Manchester City Council in Turing’s honour it was anger I felt more than anything. The apologies of a couple of opportunistic MPs is possibly the cheapest tribute that can be paid to the man. The establishment which they represent did not make a mistake 57 years ago – it demonstrated its moral bankruptcy and its intractable power.
A government apology is a like mafia apology and the only way we should accept it from either is if it is accompanied by a laying down of guns, of power and threats because otherwise it will just happen again – oppression of those who cannot defend themselves, in some other form.
Wed 30 Sep 2009
The BBC News reports that “Negative subliminal messages work”. A study published in Nature by a team out of University College London flashed messages at subjects too fast for them to be consciously aware of what the word was. Messages were split into three categories, ‘positive’, ‘neutral’ and ‘negative’ words. According to the article subjects were able to identify the negative words as negative 66% of the time, compared to 50% of the time with the rest.
But isn’t the point of subliminal messages that they can influence behavior without the knowledge of the subject? Like buying more popcorn at the cinema, for example. Isn’t that why they are banned on UK television (phew I feel safer)? So I’d think that by most people’s definition, this doesn’t show that subliminal messages ‘work’. There’s an effect there, and it’s interesting, yet I can’t help but wonder how difficult it’d be to construct a scientific study to test the claimed behavioral effect of subliminal messages – and give us some results that are really interesting.
Wed 23 Sep 2009
My favourite tip for avoiding procrastination has always been this: concentrate on doing the smallest amount of work possible. If you’re writing a novel, try writing a sentence. If you’re learning a new programming language, try a hello world. Instead of taking a break to check your email or the news or making a coffee, aim to do the very tiniest of tasks first.
The idea is that once you get started, it’ll be easy to keep going.
So instead of putting it off forever more, here is the smallest unit of work I can do towards this blog… and the theory is put to the test.
KeyThing