Translate

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Open process but still more can say

To me transparency is not only fun it helps I think as it keeps me from needing to explain myself much, and over time helps with consistency. And I've been chasing my own solutions for things publicly for over 20 years now.

Start of the problem solving thankfully noted at least the month and year as was April 1995 when I started as a hobby. And at some point decided I needed a day and I think I started April 15th so declared that the day. Figured was a good way to exercise my mind. Yup, it is. Not so much public at first though.

So before social media existed and before blogs. Actually had a website at one point, but even before was really first public back in 1996 when I got on Usenet and tried to talk out math ideas.

With that kind of time have seen quite a few things, and even had situations where was certain had important things, and there were other people along you can say who were paying attention, and I found out I was WRONG. The ideas didn't pan out.

Well I'd feel terrible even though felt was a longshot anyway figuring out anything important, and talked out my ideas and put up just about everything was thinking but still made mistakes especially early on, which it turns out is natural.

These days have a very refined process which actually does limit that at least that I can see. Where reality is most of the ideas that make it through to my blogs have been put through some kind of testing, and definitely if they stay up.

So yeah in case you didn't know I pursued an open idea search process where I think hiding basic research ideas out of fear that someone else might steal them is just boring. Which meant I'd post about an idea near its inception, and talk out theories as I chased it down. And got bored years ago with the fear that someone might scoop me.

Reality is, it was easier. And I do NOT recommend it. Having ideas stolen is a reality. I'm just in a unique position where it doesn't matter for me with BASIC ideas that are global if valuable. People can't steal the biggest ones.

History will always dig to figure it out.

So yeah if you've wondered, no I didn't care if someone tried to steal my ideas. I encouraged it. It may take awhile, but eventually credit for the idea will still go, to me

Basic research phase is OVER though. I need to call it. So today is good. That means end to open process as well. Was fun.

Have tried before to end it but I feel it now. So from April 15, 1995 to July 31, 2016, was a good run. I've got a enough basic ideas. Now more interested in refining. And THAT does not work so well all out in the open.


James Harris

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Advancing knowledge reality

Our species has done well in comparison to itself, which is the meta perspective we're stuck with as human beings, and that has required VAST amounts of useful and working knowledge figured out by countless humans most of whom are unremembered. That working knowledge is necessary for the technology which moves our world and so much more that makes human life meaningful.

Not surprisingly many would like to add to that vast amount of working knowledge I'll call functional from here on out, as I like the word even though is longer, and plenty of people do. And scientists especially are tasked with pushing the foundations, reworking them if necessary, and expanding the predictive certainty that lets so many live comfortable lives, though admittedly too many others still do not.

Of course even more fun if you can push the limits of functional human knowledge, which means plenty of people think they can. And lots try, where the odds of doing so in some really big way especially for a single human being, are infinitesimal. The odds that some ideas running around in the head of one of the billions of humans currently on the planet are really going to change things for ALL those billions is not surprisingly, thankfully, really, REALLY tiny.

Doesn't keep people from trying though! And should not. Through millennia there have been the people who have done it. Some of them recognized and honored with great prestige.

People long gone who changed your life today with what they figured out.

But make no mistake, if you are some person who thinks you have figured out some knowledge that will be functional in a HUGE way for the human species you better be prepared for the burn I like to call it. Imagine your species sitting on you for awhile until they can figure out if this thing actually works or not, if they notice you that is. And they probably will not.

That can feel rather brutal as you face endless checks and sometimes harsh criticisms, or the bleakness of being simply ignored, which should test every aspect, push you against so many things you thought impossible, test your limits, and more than likely? You will probably fail.

And like countless others before you, your efforts may seem meaningless in the mix, as at the end of the day, either you couldn't get that knowledge through? Or it really wasn't as important as you thought it was. So it can seem like was a waste of people's time. But the effort can matter, if only in finding your limits.

But yeah there are plenty of ideas that will just not be worth others considering. That reality means it's not an easy path and shouldn't be.

Which can help protect our species from being pushed around by idea after idea like a leaf in a windstorm. And despite it, dangerous notions still plague humanity, so appreciate the intense tests which can feel like trials or be actual trials, if you dare. Cherish the intensity needed to pursue truth no matter what. Wish humanity were more efficient in figuring out who is right or not, but don't doubt the necessity. Routinely our species knocks off people with very valuable ideas! Dismisses people who were brilliant and right, who end up terribly wronged. But guess what? We know about them because we still have their ideas.

People come and go. Our species? Would be nice for humanity to stay awhile.

Shouldn't treat that too lightly though as is terribly sad and MUCH better when people get proper recognition for great ideas without going through a painful process or even just never having in their lifetime.

Proper recognition is not guaranteed though.

If you want to help your species on the large with world changing new ideas?

Then prepare yourself.

You will be tested. And you will probably, fail.

Cannot work any other way. And I love it that way. I find it comforting.

Know I've tried despite knowing all of the above. And yeah there will be people who DO try regardless. I do wonder at times to myself why.

I think is the quest to know. I like to tell myself that the pursuit of truth is the highest ideal. But how does anyone know?


James Harris

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Advice for The Rock on YouTube

Update Jun 12, 2019: Posted this thing jokingly back July 2016. And not surprisingly, none of this advice was followed by him, but hey, who knows if the guy ever read it. Who cares. Was fun for me to write, but later thought better of having it public for some reason. But now decided, I need it up. ___JSH

-------------------------------

Noticed that noted actor and sports figure Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is promoting his YouTube channel. And watched his first video which has already got over a million views, so figure he knows what he's doing, but what do I care? Can trot out my own advice anyway:

1. Have a mood for each video

Got my own theories of entertainment focused on mood, so of course that's first. And mood should be SAME through entire video clip, and should be easy as videos tend to be short.

2. Have a consistent mood for videos

BEFORE I even click on the freaking video as yeah I subscribed I need to have a rough idea of how it is likely to make me FEEL and it better DELIVER. Which means, have a consistent SET of moods.

3. Forget the noise, range is NOT your friend

On YouTube if you range too much with the mood it will destroy your channel.

4. Forget celebrity, YouTube doesn't care

So except for really um, about to contradict myself but some look SO GOOD, but sure you know plenty of celebs but can just leave them off your channel. Sigh. I shouldn't give that advice. And have them anyway just for fun as won't help view counts.

5. Ignore all advice except mine

Forget any other advice others have given. Just use the above and your own knowledge of entertainment. Having been a performer, should be easy.

Take me seriously if you must but just got in a mood to type up something. I'm not taking me seriously. Going to post anyway as why not?

It's my blog.

Well that took all of ten whole minutes. Guess gotta go find something else now to entertain myself. Maybe I just write too fast? Nah. I'm just that good.

Oh almost forgot! Kick butt on that movie about the Man of Bronze. I figure you were born for that role as character came out before you were born am sure: Doc Savage

Even the freaking name is freaking awesome cool.

Ok, twelve minutes. Twelve whole minutes to write this post? Gotta practice more. But now to editing, and who knows how long that will take.

Oh yeah, no affiliation with The Rock, nor is this post in affiliation with any entertainment folks or YouTube guess should note. Just some guy who likes to babble on his blog. Is fun. Yeah.


James Harris

Monday, July 18, 2016

Meta of some of my idea directions

Recently concluded that am a meta innovator, which can help explain recent idea directions, and meta means self-referential. So yeah, I like to focus on the why of why I do things, like why talk entertainment now?

Talking entertainment as have been frustrated with things that missed the mark for me, and especially with bad endings, where I had a functional definition for science already. So why not figure out a science of entertainment?

So why did I have a functional definition of science?

Because I was frustrated with discussions around climate change, while have been a bit with talk about science before, but felt a more pressing need. Remarkably having my own functional definition of science makes it MUCH easier for me to talk subject of climate science, when I do so, in political arenas.

But how did I know how to do a functional definition of science?

Because decades ago started working on old math problems deemed difficult though relatively simple to express in order to exercise my mind. Idea was that with little likelihood of solving them could work on them indefinitely, like a dog gnawing on a bone. But instead felt I had solved a few but started asking myself, how did I know for sure?

So I defined mathematical proof in a functional way so that I could tell if a mathematical argument was true or not, as I went looking at dictionary definitions and found that going from them to actual mathematical arguments of mine I was studying, I still didn't know.

So my first formal functional definition was for mathematical proof, then for science, and then for entertainment. Functional definitions let you know if you have the thing defined.

And that is the chain of how I ended up defining entertainment functionally.

Turns out it's about lots of frustration really.

My feeling though? If I need something and it isn't there already with ideas, have no problems now with figuring something out.

And I want better entertainment. See? It's not complicated when it's all laid out I think.


James Harris

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Is mood focus entertainment innovation?

Seeing entertainment as a way to safely control mood is a path I put forward over a year ago, and after playing with it a bit, am now wondering, how innovative is it?

People have long talked mood with entertainment. In my own experience I can think of friends asking, what are you in the mood for? That could be about food or movies or other things, like just hanging out. And people talk about things that break the mood or ruin the mood. That can be VERY important on a date, not to ruin the mood.

And people pursue that mood control entertainment can bring, but only if something is entertaining! The innovation then is if mood focus can help you understand why anything entertains you. That word "anything" is scary to me. Anything? Really? Well the idea to me is to build a science of entertainment, so yeah, goal is anything. Not playing around.

More accurately focusing on mood I think can improve entertainment and have given some basic analysis as just starting. With only a little over a year am still lots considering possibilities.

But I focused in this direction with television and a recent series to talk how Battlestar Galactica reboot could have ended in a way that kept the mood. Occurs to me can shift how you see the series so warning upfront if are a fan of it.

And I explained why the heroes should usually win in entertainment, and why what some claim is supposedly realism in movies can really be like following worse performers in tennis instead of the most dominant champions. Just look at top tennis players, don't they usually win too? Want more "realistic" tennis where they lose more?

Have also brainstormed how to get the mood for some particular entertainment.

Or you can check out the post with a formalized functional definition of entertainment, to see the foundations on which these ideas operate.

If these ideas resonate and want to help, best way? Be skeptical, and ask someone else for an opinion. Yeah that means you share the concepts. Caught me at that, eh? But rest assured that will move things along. Good news though is you don't have to do a thing. If these ideas work well then eventually I kind of think there will be some movers and shakers who notice.


James Harris

Friday, July 15, 2016

Mood analysis of Battlestar Galactica reboot

Need some distraction. And entertainment is one of the best ways to find distraction, where have put forward the functional idea that entertainment is a way to safely control mood. That functional aspect is about knowing when something is entertaining or not, or in explaining why something is entertaining. And here will talk a favorite television series of mine, which was the reboot of Battlestar Galactica where here is a link to its IMDb page.

At its simplest mood is emotion, but can be a complex constellation of emotions, which is why it's not enough to just talk about a feeling. You can have a mood of simple joy, so the emotion is simple joy and you are feeling simple joy, but entertainment can involve a spectrum of feelings.

Will hypothesize that with the Battlestar Galactica reboot the dominant mood of the show was how humans feel with potential rivals built by us, as the human beings in the series are at war with a race of robots built by them, called Cylons.

The series starts with the Cylons who had been thought contained, destroying 12 worlds of human beings, but missed getting one space warship called a battlestar commanded by Admiral Adama, trying both to survive as it is relentlessly hunted, and find a new home for the survivors, which is in the series our planet Earth, which is mythical to the survivors as what they call the 13th colony.

So the mood of the series I'm hypothesizing is a complex constellation of emotions around contemplating beings created by human beings who bring into question what it means to be human, even more so than in past science fiction as an innovation was giving them religion. The Cylons believe in God, and have a sense of a religious destiny. So what makes human then?

Turns out that is a huge draw and gave endless ways for writers to be creative as the series dealt with shock and loss, as well as romance, reproduction and friendship along with lots of other things that are strongly about our sense of our own humanity, including religion, as many of the crew of the Galactica are deeply religious as well.

It was then not surprisingly appealing, as writers attempted to mirror vast amounts of what we see as human in the Cylons. There was even a key romance in the series or something of it between one human looking Cylon and an anti-hero in a leading scientist, who had inadvertently helped the Cylons to defeat human security in the first place.

Without giving the ending away, will note that the writers may have found themselves challenged with ending the series as the mood they created was built on the tension of: what does it mean to be human if something created by humans can have so much of what we have?

And also in ways have more as the Cylons were stronger than most humans, and the human looking ones could be endlessly reborn, sending their consciousness into new exact duplicate bodies. These were dramatic elements I think as it was also pushed that the human looking ones were so indistinguishable from human beings that detecting them was either impossible or nearly so, as a constant theme through the series.

To me the writers maybe missed the point that the question is one facing humanity today as computer systems get more advanced so there is no answer, yet. Their ending tries to give one though and I found it unsatisfying. And will not give the end to the series away that they chose, but will make up an alternate one instead to show how it could be done to keep the mood.

Imagine towards the end of the series the surviving humans find that the Cylons had a built in flaw, which was unrecorded to give human beings the ultimate advantage, and the swiftness of their attack was to stop its use. Not sure if the surviving humans knew of it, they'd pursued to exterminate, while trying to remove it themselves.

And at the end of the series, the surviving humans finally find it, debate its use, and try it, destroying most of the Cylons. But some have made progress in removing it, and are hurt but survive. But the Galactica to use it had to be exposed having bet everything on total destruction. Which means the remaining Cylons are still in perfect position to retaliate. The two sides may simply annihilate each other though. But the crew of the Galactica turn over the secrets to the destructive flaw to the remaining Cylons who then simply turn away and leave them alone. It was their only concern.

Pursuing, the Battlestar Galactica, as of course they had not given all they know and can now track the Cylons, chase them to, yup, Earth.

The final show has the Galactica enter our Solar System and approach Earth where the few remaining Cylon ships are already in orbit. Human beings on our planet only just beginning to be aware.

Tension builds.

But the Cylons do not attack. Instead some of the human looking Cylons fly down to Earth, and Admiral Adama with key others flies down as well, and there is a stare off on the planet surface.

Again the Cylons turn away and walk towards humans walking towards them, with open arms. Adama looks at the others, shrugs, and also begins walking towards the approaching humans, followed by his team. But the Cylons are ahead. The End.

My alternate ending implies the Cylons may be looking to make their case for a different view of humanity, still raising the question of the value of their manufactured human versus people like us. With the original humans there to make their own argument

Entertainment then pursues the question without giving the answer, maintaining the mood, as we don't have the answer yet.

I find it intriguing though that mood-wise a more powerful story would be with teeming Cylons, but made a shift for plot where most are destroyed to balance out the story against tragic beginning. So mood does not determine plot as either way could go. And I just threw something together so used a rather simple plot device. The goal here was simply to focus on keeping the mood.

That was fun! Will note that using my own ideas for this type of analysis intrigues me without me being sure how it would go, so I was learning as I typed! And got to answers for myself as well.

Learning as I go, often intrigues me.

Liked that analysis? Then please share! Or if you choose, feel free to disagree in the comments if you did not. Did I get close? Or miss the boat? Do you think this approach to mood analysis might have merit? How might it mess with endings?

Will note that bad endings irritate me. Mood analysis could help writers figure out how to handle the proper mood for the series, and avoid bad endings that ruin it.

But other thing am a fan of the series, and especially really loved how they did space scenes. And I want to see more like it that better fits mood. Of course.


James Harris

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Relief in community perspective

To me one way the web can test you is when you get the vague idea you should be making more money somehow, or worse you talk about a few things and have people who will TELL you as if is some absolute. Like they know.

Much to my relief a few years back motivated to work out how it all works, realized that much of what I do helps the global community without any reason to expect money in it. Whew.

So how do I think it works really to make money? I explained my guesses in detail in a post, but gist of it is, you have some form of upfront contract, and exchange legal goods or services, like your physical or mental labor, in exchange for money. Where I say money is just a social IOU, backed by society. For example the US dollar is backed by the US Government.

So yeah worrying about my own situation pushed me to study money in-depth and conclude it really wasn't explained well to me before! And with my own admitted musings was surprised simple explanations seemed to fit reality.

Of course they are MY ideas and I like them. Others are sufficiently warned that am just some guy musing along.

Oh, feel a need to also push some of my thoughts on promotion as well. To me LOTS of what you see on the web helps promote something and should not be paid for, like if someone is trying to sell me something and am checking it for quality, why should I pay for it first? Makes no sense.

Yes, there are lots of ways to make money. And yup, posted about when to charge, in my opinion.

Gist of that opinion is that you should charge when have an upfront contract to legally provide products or services to a stranger, not for community reasons. That is how that stranger can pay you back! As with community can be about helping your community without an immediate return on a favor.

But with a stranger, how else can that person pay back for a favor? Money lets that be immediate so that people can take for granted in countries all over the world walking into a strange place and having the favor of an item given to you by a stranger, in exchange for money. That is, you walk into a store and buy something.

But in contrast where is really about much more than a favor, like if you help a starving person with food, such a return is not necessary. Which is not really doing a favor either to me, but about what decent humans should do for each other.

However can create problems for communities figuring out how to pay properly for things NOT about favors either as so much about community, like firefighting, teaching, police work, other government services and yup, political office.

Which to me gets back to community perspective.

Simple approaches attract me.

Though will admit that does not mean they work!

But how much should I emphasize just talking my own ideas here without pretending to be an expert? But just in case, will note am NOT giving legal or monetary advice. Just talking out some ways of looking at money and business that I guess make sense to me.

There are also people who enjoy being out here on the web learning things, and talking a point of view. Doesn't mean am claiming expertise. And am not.


James Harris

Monday, July 11, 2016

One way social media motivates me

Really like social media but really not good at that getting followers thing, which is ok with me. But got me wondering, what does it really mean? So was motivated by social media with SO much emphasis on follower counts or whatever is related to having TONS of people show popularity, to figure it out.

Not surprisingly given admitted low numbers, like have 165 Twitter followers which is actually up, have concluded am ok and one of my posts with suggestions for using Twitter actually starts by noting how to keep your follower count low. I'm serious too.

Puzzling out social media lead me to the conclusion that people build audiences by being entertaining. Which is kind of a duh. But realized then I wasn't quite certain what entertainment was, so I made up a definition. Yup. Am serious on that as well

To me getting a functional definition for entertainment, as that's in contrast to a descriptive one, because I was wondering what all those follower counts meant, is such a BONUS. And have had it for over a year now, and it changes my perspectives will admit.

For each of us, I think is an interesting question, how good am I at entertaining? And I think it very useful that I can explain that functionally, as really is about what you can sense in others and help them feel.

To me that's more to the fun of it. As I say it's all about moods. And how people safely control them. And am now in the mood to stop typing. And thankfully have complete control, so will wind down this post. And end things here.


James Harris