3/16/2014 in Journal Stuff

3/2/2014

CRUMBS AND CARROTS!

Because when I walk through my apartment and step on crumbs in the kitchen with bare feet and they stick, I quote half the professor brothers under my breath. Because this IS a free-for-all of facts. The floor in the kitchen is slowly getting more and more covered in onion shavings and twist ties. The front of his door is getting matted down with dirt clumps. The counter has crusties and milk stains from meals he didn’t clean up after. The housing has new protocols for moving rooms between semesters that is going to make it really annoying in the transition. A single day, with a five hour window to do it. If I forget, I may be SOL for next semester.

Is it my working memory that brings up references as I go through life? When I look at my life, I wonder for a moment whether a turtle or a wolf would better symbolize myself. I look at my roommate and see nothing but mirroring and parroting, I wonder how mirrors would be able to move if they were a person.

I would love to see an actual mirrormask.

3/11/2014

Took my thermal test without studying. It was too easy. Every question was spelled out. Felt like I had my hand held. Gotta work on improving my statistics grade.

3/16/2014

Got sick a couple days ago. Chills, headache, nausea. Stayed in bed till I didn’t want to throw up. Didn’t eat until I stopped feeling sick to my stomache. Ended up not drinking much of anything outside of water. Took another day to recover. So glad this happened during a 4-day weekend rather than during the week. I don’t think I’d have been able to survive classes very well.

I started singing along to my playlists when I heard my roommate out in the kitchen due to how loud they can get sometimes. (did this a while ago, just now writing about it) Two days later, I’m out making myself something to eat and I hear his tone deaf ass doing the same thing. He hasn’t done anything like this for a semester and a half and starts it up so close to when I do it. Parrot.

Bostrom’s simulation argument was the basis of my final paper in my metaphysics class. I had forgotten his name but recently looked up my old papers due to the concepts I came up with while writing it. It also got me looking at stuff like the Fermi Paradox and game theory concepts. Grim Trigger, Mutually Assured Destruction, and my all-time favorite, the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The threat of power holds power, and yet I keep happening on this argument that people don’t believe that a threat is worth responding to.

My comm teacher tried to make the same sort of argument my poli-sci teacher did years ago about how he could make anyone do something they claim they wouldn’t by changing the situation enough. Her point was that she could claim that given a situation with a threat, she could change the situation around so that we wouldn’t feel we were justified in taking a life (this started due to our discussion regarding capital punishment). She brought up an example of someone breaking into your home and who had a gun. This person then proceeded rob you at gunpoint. Would you feel justified in killing them. Most of the class said yes. Then she started changing the situation badly. She was supposed to inch it along until the person was just breaking into your house as a silhouette and who was looking for medical supplies or something to save their children who were in a nearby accident or something. Instead, she started making up a backstory for why they had to break in and threaten you with a gun. Regardless of the situation, I couldn’t see not being justified of killing someone who threatened with a gun. Even if they felt they were justified in the threatening, they were offering the ethical concept that they are willing to take your life to achieve their goals. I described my reasoning like an extension of the Golden Rule. They were acting in a way that they would wish to be treated. In this case, that their life is worth less than your own. They introduced the process of might makes right. If they weren’t, then they wanted to be treated differently than they treated other people. This would be hypocritical, unequal, and useful only for gaining a personal advantage.

The only good rationalization I can come up with is that they’re lying to a positive end. They’re threatening you with a gun because there’s no time, the ends justifies the means, etc. They have no intention of taking your life but are influencing you to their end for what would be an assumedly altruistic outcome. The problem is epistemology. The victim doesn’t know the person threatening them. The aggressor has literally started an interpersonal war for a gain and is using the victim to get it. Which would mean the only correct way for this situation to end (correct being a best case scenario) would be for the aggressor to make sure that the victim has no way to retaliate on them without permanently endangering the victim.

Another problem is that, in every case of someone being an aggressor (in this case, someone who initiates the confrontation), I can’t see a way they can be a victim. I can’t justify reversing the roles just because the victim gains more power in the confrontation. Reactive reasoning. Granted, this would have to take a lot into account. People feel justified shooting cops years after they feel they were mistreated by one, vendettas where someone kills someone else for something that was never resolved. Time based justice/vengeance. Perception. Reactive reasoning makes sense to me.

Oh, and my teacher told me I was the first person who made a good point to her when it came to the reasoning of capital punishment. Whoo. And I made the entire class laugh. With the words “jazz hands.” Skillz.