My wife turned up this post, in which a blogger goes on a bit of a rant in regards to attractiveness and weight. I’d like to throw my two cents into the pot and comment on two specific things she touches on briefly.

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Note: I originally wrote this article almost a month ago, before the incident involving the teenagers and the tiger at the San Francisco Zoo. After that incident, I decided to hold off posting this until the matter calmed down a bit. Now that reddit isn’t being spammed with constant updates on the incident, I feel its safe to throw my two cents into the conversation, though I will not address this particular incidentspecifically.

As explained in this article (Warning: graphic picture), a man was mauled to death by two tigers when he climbed over a protective barrier, and stuck his arm through the bars of the cage to take a close up picture with his cell phone. To paraphrase a comment from bash.org, they should put something in the cage to deter people from getting near it. Perhaps a fierce animal that would attack anyone that got too close?

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I’ve been thinking about a post like this for a while, but what finally pushed me over the edge is this: There Is A Reddit Bot War Going On Right Now. Here’s Proof. The link goes to a reddit comment about a bot war over Ron Paul happening on reddit. Apparently, some people have set up bots to up-vote anything with Ron Paul in the title. Others have retaliated by setting up bots that down vote on the same criteria. I’m sorry, but what the fuck?!?

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Time travel has been a trope of Science Fiction since its inception as a genre. Perhaps the most famous is H. G. Wells “The Time Machine,” which gives us brief glimpses of the future at several points. The idea is certainly seductive. Who wouldn’t want to be able to whiz off to the future to view the progress humanity has made, or travel to the past and witness historic events?

But whether or not time travel is possible is still an open debate among physicists. In this post I want to discuss some of the paradoxes that would seem to result if time travel is possible, as well as an interesting algorithm for solving NP problems using a time machine.

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Sorry for the lack of activity. I got married one moth ago as of yesterday. Things have finally settled back down, and I am working on several posts. The first should be ready in a day or two.

Go and Chess are generally considered to be the paradigm of strategy games and pure intellectual pursuit. But not many people have heard of Go in the western world, at least not compared to Chess. Anyone that likes chess is doing themselves a grave disservice by not at least trying out Go. I learned how to play Go approximately 6 years ago, but only played sporadically until approximately 2 years ago, when i started to play any chance i could. These days, i try to play at least 4 or 5 games a week, and have seen my strength rise dramatically as a result. Frustrated by a lack of people to play against, this is a small attempt of mine to introduce the game to people, in the hopes of increasing its popularity.

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Or, You Can't Know What You Don't Know You Can't Know.

This is an interesting result from modal logic that I will try to sketch here. The upshot of the result, depending on which side of a divide you fall into, is either that there are some truths that are logically impossible to know, or that every truth is already known by someone.

The dividing line in this case is whether you are a realist or anti-realist. The realists posit that there is an external reality that has certain definite properties. The anti-realist deny that such an external reality exists (or, in some cases, that we can have access to it). I'll get more into this distinction after I sketch the proof. If you find logic boring, feel free to skip the proof and scroll to the end for a brief discussion on the implications of this result.

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The paradox of the heap, also known as the Sorities Paradox (from the Greek word for heap), is a paradox revolving around the problem of vagueness.

In its classical formulation, the paradox is expressed as follows:

One grain of sand is not a heap.
If one grain of sand is not a heap, adding one grain of sand will not make it a heap.
So two grains of sand are not a heap.
So three grains of sand do not make a heap.
…
X grains of sand do not make a heap.
Therefore, 10,000 grains of sand do not make a heap.

The form of this argument boils down to:

X grains of sand are not a heap.
If X grains of sand are not a heap, adding 1 grain of sand will not make it a heap.
(Some arbitrary large number of grains of sand) do not make a heap.

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