Saturday, June 13, 2009
Climbing, Meetings, and Robots
It was incredible! I only got to do three runs, but I had an incredible time. I really hope I find a climbing club or something of the sorts in Australia. My first two runs I did pretty well on - all fun and games, no fear. My last one, which was aptly named "The Unnamed", was a different story.
The goal was to climb the 100 feet up and stay at the top to avoid needing to hike back to the parking lot. A long story short, I did it. But it was quite the struggle. This has happened only once before, but apparently sometimes while I climb I get really irrationally scared. This was one of those times. It didn't help my mental game that our rope had an easy 3-5 feet of stretch in it and that it was my belayer's first time (although he did perfectly). I remember climbing and asking every 30 seconds, "You got me?" Iwanted to be on belay as tight as possible, which is the opposite of what I normally want. I don't know why I get scared sometimes, but it sure doesn't make the climbing any easier. (Side note: terrible use of but by me just now, I didn't contrast anything there.) Since it was such a long climb I took a few breaks on good ledges/at the belay's expense. Unfortunately when you're scared a break is the equiavlent of hugging a big rock. About 15 feet from the top, I cut my knee and left a blood trail going up - it was pretty cool to look at while I rapelled down. Felt like I had left my mark on the rock. Also, I'm pretty sure that blood trail helped the next climber find how to get up.
After the climb, ZC, AB, and I all went to Waffle House where we had the most intelligent conversation Wa Ho has ever seen. Between the car ride and that dinner AB managed to blow my mind by convincing me that free will doesn't exist, or better yet, that free will is a ridiculous concept.
What is free will? I tried answering by saying its the ability to make your own decisions; if my life were a series of if trees, each branch taken at any point would be decided completely by me. I always have the ability to choose which branch. AB argued that each branch could be decided in one of two ways (his wordings been changed to make it make sense...): 1) Uniform Distribution (or perhaps some other form of distribution 2) Chaos/Determinism.
In order for there to be a free will, there would need to be some form of "will". What's a will? Does it make decisions? Does it do so based on past experiences? Hmmm, this sounds like chaos. Maybe its just a uniform distribution, like a computer's random number generator...doesn't make much sense to me/not a convincing argument.
The last option is maybe it's neither; maybe its true randomness. Only response to that: Shit. That would imply that all of our actions are random! IE cause and effect no longer existed. Nothing we did had any direction/repercussions/effects on our future actions! This is even less convincing than a distribution.
In other news, I'm questioning my belief in Deism after this one...maybe I only hold onto it because I refuse to believe that enough/complex if trees can model human life (aka human life is chaos).
In other, other news, chaos theory is awesome and I've always referenced it in these conversations in the past but didn't know its name until this blog post.
Adios, World.
DJ ¶ 7:46 AM
- General Feelings: Great week, got lots done
- Busier = better
- RoboCup Progress: going great!
- Found a 14.8 V to 5 V regulator with 5 A of output (for cheap! but lots of external circuitry)
- Set up equations to define Kicker Circuit.
- Became a respectable member on the GumStix forum.
- Learned lots about how to use GumStix - mainly we just need more cables.
- Drove a motor with a square wave (aka PWM)! Now need to use an H Bridge and do it...
- Other: Not much programming (no time)
- Started tutoring Multivariable Calculus - good fun to learn again. I made the mistake of not preparing for one of my sessions and failed at Double Integrals. I've since reviewed them - they're easy. Also a good source of extra cash and motivation to wake up early.
- Hoping TS manages to visit me with a crew next week!
- I love outdoor climbing!
- Nailed my discussion with Professor KC - looks like I'll have a decent Biofluidic chip lab to come back to in January.
It was incredible! I only got to do three runs, but I had an incredible time. I really hope I find a climbing club or something of the sorts in Australia. My first two runs I did pretty well on - all fun and games, no fear. My last one, which was aptly named "The Unnamed", was a different story.
The goal was to climb the 100 feet up and stay at the top to avoid needing to hike back to the parking lot. A long story short, I did it. But it was quite the struggle. This has happened only once before, but apparently sometimes while I climb I get really irrationally scared. This was one of those times. It didn't help my mental game that our rope had an easy 3-5 feet of stretch in it and that it was my belayer's first time (although he did perfectly). I remember climbing and asking every 30 seconds, "You got me?" Iwanted to be on belay as tight as possible, which is the opposite of what I normally want. I don't know why I get scared sometimes, but it sure doesn't make the climbing any easier. (Side note: terrible use of but by me just now, I didn't contrast anything there.) Since it was such a long climb I took a few breaks on good ledges/at the belay's expense. Unfortunately when you're scared a break is the equiavlent of hugging a big rock. About 15 feet from the top, I cut my knee and left a blood trail going up - it was pretty cool to look at while I rapelled down. Felt like I had left my mark on the rock. Also, I'm pretty sure that blood trail helped the next climber find how to get up.
After the climb, ZC, AB, and I all went to Waffle House where we had the most intelligent conversation Wa Ho has ever seen. Between the car ride and that dinner AB managed to blow my mind by convincing me that free will doesn't exist, or better yet, that free will is a ridiculous concept.
What is free will? I tried answering by saying its the ability to make your own decisions; if my life were a series of if trees, each branch taken at any point would be decided completely by me. I always have the ability to choose which branch. AB argued that each branch could be decided in one of two ways (his wordings been changed to make it make sense...): 1) Uniform Distribution (or perhaps some other form of distribution 2) Chaos/Determinism.
In order for there to be a free will, there would need to be some form of "will". What's a will? Does it make decisions? Does it do so based on past experiences? Hmmm, this sounds like chaos. Maybe its just a uniform distribution, like a computer's random number generator...doesn't make much sense to me/not a convincing argument.
The last option is maybe it's neither; maybe its true randomness. Only response to that: Shit. That would imply that all of our actions are random! IE cause and effect no longer existed. Nothing we did had any direction/repercussions/effects on our future actions! This is even less convincing than a distribution.
In other news, I'm questioning my belief in Deism after this one...maybe I only hold onto it because I refuse to believe that enough/complex if trees can model human life (aka human life is chaos).
In other, other news, chaos theory is awesome and I've always referenced it in these conversations in the past but didn't know its name until this blog post.
Adios, World.
DJ ¶ 7:46 AM
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