Your walk in a cafe. You see everyone is working alone with their laptop. Nobody is talking to each other. Even the most ardent Internet junkie would admit they should have spent more time personally with other people rather than glue to the computer screen all day long. These cafe owner even try to setup rules asking patrons to log off and talk.

These moves are no doubt well intentioned. It will probably inspire many supporters. But why is so many people stick to their computer in the first place? It would be easy if we can determine that too much Internet is for sure a bad behavior, like watching too much TV. But what if it is true, that your second life is actually better than your first life?

2010.02.06 [philosophy] - comments (0)

My son is a really good talker now. He is very inquisitive about everything. The most common question he asks all the time is "What is the name of this?" Sometimes he asks for the name of an animal, sometimes for some sort of vehicle, sometimes for an object that we just see or use. But sometimes he'd also ask for something we don't usually attach a name to.

One day we were walking on the street, he pointed to the ground and asked me "what is the name of this?" So I answered "pavement". Sometimes I used a new vocabulary like "hauling" and he'd ask what is the name of "hauling"? Then I explained to him what hauling means. Sometimes he'd ask "what is the name of green?" And I just answer green is green.

People might find him cute for asking this sort of naive questions. I think he is just curious and want to learn about everything. Somehow I have an epiphany; perhaps this is a lesson in epistemology for me, to know a thing is to be able to name it. He is just practicing the saying.

2009.04.24 [philosophy] - comments (0)

I was in a coffee shop one day. I saw this man in his 50s. His look aged. His hair grey and thinning. One thought flashed though my mind. I saw my son Tat Chee aged like him.

Mind you my son, now two months old, is the cutest baby in the world. He just starts to sleep through the night. He cries a lot but also smiles sometimes. He can babble and we are expecting to hear his first legible word. Then there is child care and school in our mind. Nobody would have associated old age with a baby. I should really concerned about myself with all these middle age issues like hair loss striking close.

But then... one day... Tat Chee would indeed become an aged man. Surely. Inevitably.

O impermanence.

2006.04.21 [personal, philosophy] - comments (0)

US federal judge rules against teaching 'Intelligent Design' in classroom yestarday. Good for the kids now that the idiots are not allowed to stuff non-sense into their curriculum.

I don't plan to spend time debating creationism itself. Instead this led me contemplate the appeal of creationism and the concept of anthropomorphism. There are plenty of world origin myth. What about the world is originate from four elements and such and such. Few would consider them as valid theory. Why does creationism seems to be more plausible and have more credential in comparison? I really like to challenge fundamental assumptions. Great insight would often come after.

First of all many of us are already indoctrinated with Christian theory since young. But besides that the logic of creationism appeals to anthropomorphism - the attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena. We love to perceive the world according to human behavior. It is easy to think of things coming from a designer similar to ourselves. In contrast other theories like Big bang, heaven and earth or four elements don't have this kind of appeal.

Turns out I am not the first one to think of this. Philosophers have been thinking about anthropomorphism for a long time. Just too abstract for most people to grasp probably.

2005.12.21 [philosophy] - comments (0)